Red Hat said it deepened its work with Amazon Web Services (AWS) through native integration into Red Hat’s OpenShift container platform.

The integration plans are designed to provide users access to AWS services through OpenShift or in an on-premises environment. This will include the ability to build and extend container-based enterprise applications with OpenShift using AWS compute, database, analytics, machine learning, networking, and mobile application services.

“This will enable … customers to be more agile as they'll be able to use the same application development platform to build on-premises or in the cloud,” Red Hat explained in a statement.

Mike Ferris, VP of business development at Red Hat, said the move should allow users to take advantage of AWS' public cloud capabilities in dealing with containers in a hybrid cloud environment, and that he expects the deeper integration to accelerate interest in containers.

The companies also said they were working on increased integration between AWS and Kubernetes, which is the container orchestration platform Red Hat uses for OpenShift. Red Hat last month released the latest (3.5) version of the OpenShift platform, with changes targeted at support for an enterprise Kubernetes cluster, as well as expanded application support and claimed security and networking enhancements.

The updated work is scheduled to be available to users later this year.

Red Hat President and CEO Jim Whitehurst noted during the company’s most recent quarterly results conference call that its OpenShift platform was part of one-third of its largest secured deals, matching that of its OpenStack private cloud platform. The firm also cited an IDC study of Red Hat customers that touted a five-year average return on investment of more than 500 percent; average annual benefits of nearly $1.3 million per 100 developers; and “millions of dollars of higher revenue per organization.”

Analysts highlighted potential opportunities from the OpenShift platform, with BMO Capital Market noting a recent OpenShift presentation by Red Hat having “a waiting line of attendees with folks getting turned away.”

Paul Cormier, president of products and technologies at Red Hat, noted this week in a blog post that nearly 30 companies were speaking about their production container deployments at its ongoing Red Hat Summit event.

In addition to the OpenShift integration, the company said it would continue offering its JBoss Middleware via AWS in support of allowing customers to run the platform as “containerized application components.” Red Hat management said the JBoss product represented about 15 percent of revenues in its latest quarter, but is growing in fiscal importance.

The main driver of revenues at the company remains its Enterprise Linux platform, which accounted for about 80 percent of its latest quarterly revenues. In support of the RHEL product, the company said it was working with AWS to allow for the quicker deployment of AWS services with RHEL.