"OpenShift is a platform comprising Linux, the OpenShift software and services, and a cloud backend for developing, deploying, and managing cloud applications. Write your fine code on your own computer, push it to OpenShift, and it does the heavy lifting of compiling and deploying your application.

You don't have to worry about databases and application servers, or building and maintaining an application stack, or figuring out how to scale out your applications. Just code, git push and go. It supports multiple languages, frameworks, databases, middleware, and multiple cloud hosting providers. Currently the only provider available is Amazon Web Services (AWS), but someday users will have multiple choices of Red Hat-certified providers. It's all built on free/open source software, except the OpenShift code, which Red Hat promises will be opened sometime in the future.