Red Hat’s OpenShift container platform continues to attract business, with WiPro the latest IT firm announcing cloud services backed by the offering.

WiPro said it plans to use the Red Hat product as the basis for a cloud application platform. The service is targeted at providing developers and IT teams with a process for migrating applications across public, private, and hybrid cloud deployments. Legacy applications can also continue to coexist alongside the migrated cloud-native and container-based applications.

WiPro explained the move supports its push for open source-based application lifecycle management.

OpenShift is primarily built on Docker containers and orchestrated using Kubernetes container cluster management. Red Hat in April updated the platform with changes targeted at support for an enterprise Kubernetes cluster, expanded application support, and security and networking enhancements.

Red Hat last month announced it had deepened OpenShift native integration into Amazon Web Services (AWS). The on-premise integration plans include the ability to build and extend container-based enterprise applications using AWS compute, database, analytics, machine learning, networking, and mobile application services.

Analysts have highlighted potential opportunities from the OpenShift platform.

IDC last year released a report projecting cost and operational savings tied to the use of OpenShift. They included an average annual benefit of $1.29 million per 100 application development team members per year over five years; 66 percent faster application delivery times; and a 531 percent average return on investment over five years.

BMO Capital Market recently noted an OpenShift presentation had “a waiting line of attendees with folks getting turned away.”

Red Hat in its latest quarterly results conference call said the platform was included in five of its 44 latest deals valued at more than $1 million. During the call, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst explained OpenShift was seeing attention from the financial services market and retail space.

“I think retail is recognizing the need around analytics to be able to better compete,” Whitehurst told investors. “And so, I think we have some good tailwind with the retailers as well.”

Looking ahead, Whitehurst said the service is likely to be the company’s biggest revenue driver over the next three years.

“OpenShift drives the rest of the portfolio in a very meaningful way,” Whitehurst said. “Once people are using OpenShift [it’s] much easier to consume our middleware services. And we've seen really good traction with middleware services after people have adopted OpenShift.”