Big Blue and the Hatters are teaming up to drive more cloud computing solutions that utilize Red Hat products and IBM Power System servers.

The focus is on so-called hybrid clouds in which clients utilize a mixture of on-premises hardware and cloud services.

In the recent Technology Business Research semiannual Cloud Customer Research survey of more than 1,800 enterprise respondents, IBM was identified as the global leader in hybrid environment adoption thanks to its large enterprise customer base, brand reputation and expertise in hybrid integration and IT transformation.

Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president for IBM Systems, explained the benefits of hybrid clouds at an IBM trade show.

“A hybrid cloud model enables clients to continuously adapt while also optimizing on-premises investments. IBM is uniquely able to support the flexibility clients need across IBM Systems and the cloud,” he said, according to Computer Business Review.

IBM and Red Hat have partnered together on numerous projects over the years. The latest agreement includes joint engineering development and what the tech companies call “deeper product collaboration.”

The end result will be the offering of Raleigh-based Red Hat open source products, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Virtualization across IBM’s server lineup.

“Clients choose open source capabilities to achieve new levels of agility and flexibility in their hybrid cloud environments, but they need access to optimal support,” said Scott Crowder, chief technology officer of IBM Systems. “Clients have long turned to Red Hat and IBM to support their enterprise computing needs. Now, we are expanding that relationship with Red Hat to provide new systems designed for enterprise-grade open source solutions that go far beyond what commodity infrastructure has offered.”

Financial terms of the agreement, which was announced late Monday, weren’t disclosed.

CBR noted that the agreement “will also introduce some new high performance computing capabilities for research deployments, and they will work on developing high availability capabilities for Power Systems.”

“Red Hat believes that the next generation of applications and hybrid cloud services will be powered by modern, hyperscale hardware and software that span both public clouds, like IBM Cloud, and on-premise platforms,” said Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Platforms Business Unit at Red Hat. “Red Hat and IBM are expanding their long-standing alliance to address this opportunity. Through joint engineering and deeper product collaboration, we are excited to deliver world-class solutions built on Red Hat’s portfolio of enterprise open source solutions and IBM’s Power Systems platform.”

Three key points of the effort, according to the companies, are:

  • Enabling Red Hat solutions on IBM’s next-generation Power Systems;
  • Introducing new high performance computing (HPC) capabilities for leading edge research deployments;
  • Developing high availability capabilities for Power Systems.

IBM employs several thousand people across North Carolina.

Big Blue says most Fortune top 50 companies utilize its cloud services. One of its newest data centers is located in RTP.