text: **3.1 Overview**
  
  This section introduces and describes IBM Cloud Paks. 
  
  **3.1.1 What are IBM Cloud Paks?**
  
  IBM Cloud Paks are pre-integrated containers, pre-packaged solutions, that are ready for 
  deployment in production environments. These IBM Cloud Paks can be easily deployed to 
  Kubernetes-based container orchestration platforms. They are software solutions that give 
  clients an open, faster, and more secure way than individual solutions to move core business 
  applications to any cloud. 
  
  Designed to reduce development time, IBM Cloud Paks include IBM middleware and common 
  software services for development and management, on top of a standard integration layer. 
  They are portable and can run on-premises, on public clouds, or in an integrated system. 
  
  At the time of this writing, IBM offers six independent Cloud Paks for Power Systems that 
  provides a Kubernetes environment to help to build cloud-native applications or modernize 
  the existing applications. Also, IBM Cloud Paks enable you to quickly bring workloads to an 
  integrated container platform to support production-level qualities of service and end-to-end 
  lifecycle management. 
  
  Figure 3-1 on page 39 shows the following evolution of containers: 
  
  (cid:2) Ad hoc Containers: Clients obtain IBM software binaries then create their container. 
  (cid:2) IBM Containers: Clients obtain an individual IBM container software product. 
  (cid:2) IBM Cloud Paks: Clients obtain a ready-to-use solution. 