IBM is moving quickly to tie its legacy software portfolio into its newly-acquired Red Hat assets. It’s making those services available through Cloud Paks that rely on Red Hat’s Kubernetes-based OpenShift platform to use that software across any public or private cloud environment.

Bala Rajaraman, an IBM Fellow and vice president of IBM Cloud, explained that the move will see IBM’s software and services delivered on its hybrid- and multicloud platform. That platform runs on Red Hat’s OpenShift, which uses Docker containers and Kubernetes orchestration management, and the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) open source operating system.

The move will also see IBM offer pre-integrated containerized packages conveniently called IBM Cloud Paks. The Cloud Paks tap into more than 100 IBM software products designed to run on OpenShift. They provide software support and help protect the entire stack so users can more easily migrate, integrate, and modernize their applications on any cloud.

These can be run across major public cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and on private cloud deployments. These packages will include a common operating model and set of services controlled through a unified dashboard to improve visibility and control across cloud platforms.

“The goal of this is to make them not just software, but manageable entities on our platform,” Rajaraman said.

The initial five Cloud Paks are targeted at managing data, applications, integration services, automation, and multicloud management. IBM plans to add more Cloud Paks down the road as well as update those that are already launched.

Rajaraman explained that IBM’s software has been more product oriented, while the Cloud Pak initiative is more focused on functional outcomes. He noted that this required new models of integration that also could adopt to existing systems. “It’s about bringing them together in a functional way to serve business and IT outcomes,” Rajaraman said.

Each Cloud Pak has a multicloud construct with data sourced from multiple places and strong security requirements that need to be managed. “The crux is that when you have a multicloud environment the only effective way to get your hands around it is through some sort of standardization,” Rajaraman said. “The combination of our platform and middleware allows this to manage as a total platform.”

The focus was also beyond just containerizing these applications and instead bringing them onto a Kubernetes platform. “Those are two different challenges,” Rajaraman said. “One is just a packaging statement, where the other is an operational statement” in how it operates in a real-world environment “beyond just being in a container.”

He added that this included how does it run, how does it fail, and how does it interact with already established storage. “If it was just about containerization you could have flashed it off in just a couple of hours,” Rajaraman added.

And since this is IBM, the company is also making these Cloud Paks available to work on its extensive bare metal portfolio, which includes its IBM Z and LinuxONE systems. OpenShift is already available on IBM’s Power Systems and Storage platforms.

The move follows up on a push between the two companies last year to more deeply integrate OpenShift with IBM’s Cloud Private platform and middleware services. That move, which was announced prior to the acquisition, made those IBM products part of Red Hat’s Certified Containers program that allows customers to build and deploy containerized applications on a single, integrated container platform with a single view into that enterprise data.

Prior to that integration, Michael Elder, distinguished engineer for cloud at IBM, said the companies found that some of their shared customers were attempting this same marriage without official support. “We found in many cases they were trying to use things they liked from the Red Hat layer and things they like from the IBM layer in a way that was not necessarily fully supported,” Elder said.

IBM launched its Cloud Private platform that relies on a Kubernetes-based container architecture to support integration and portability of workloads between cloud environment and management across multiple clouds.

“This is really an extension of that deal going forward,” Rajaraman said.

IBM closed on its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat last month. The deal was initially announced late last year, with IBM management citing the growing influence of hybrid cloud and container adoption as motives for what is IBM’s largest-ever acquisition.

Rajaraman, who worked as part of the integration team, reiterated IBM’s management stance that it did not plan on absorbing Red Hat’s operations, but instead it would work together to further tighten integration opportunities between the two companies. He added that this was important in order to maintain the open source ecosystem that has developed around Red Hat.

Analysts had noted concern about IBM’s ability to not harm Red Hat’s operations. That was summed up by BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman, who wrote in a research note following announcement of the deal that, “From a strategic perspective, we think IBM needs to take bold actions, but we also think the most significant risk is that IBM, in our judgement, has a mixed track record on integrating and managing purchased product companies.”