What is a service broker? (2024)

Service brokers are the link between the consumer and the provider. The broker holds information about the services provided,carries out the details of ordering, provisioning, and connecting these services to the application being built by the consumer, and automates steps that used to be performed by IT operations with multiple infrastructure management tools.

When building applications, teams need a streamlined way to select and consume services from a provider, whether it’s an on-premise database from within their organization or a messaging service from a public cloud like Amazon Web Services. Service catalogs provide a place for teams to find these services, but don’t provide all the functionality needed to connect the consumer and the provider.

In Red Hat® OpenShift®, service brokers are based on the Open Service Broker API, the standard interface between application platforms and service brokers. At Red Hat, we’re proud to collaborate within the container ecosystem to advance the Open Service Broker API, and to contribute to the Kubernetes Service Catalog on which the OpenShift Service Catalog is based.

Red Hat OpenShift is a single platform uniting operations and development teams to build and deliver applications. The Red Hat OpenShift Service Catalog uses the Open Service Broker API to help teams build hybrid cloud applicationswith consistent and automated provisioning of cloud and on-premises services.