RHEL subscriptions are going to suffer because of this
A small startup is unlikely to license RHEL servers for tasks. The real choice in that scenario is a Debian Stable based distro (including Ubuntu LTS Server) , or Centos. The advantage of Centos is that it is enterprise proven. Deploying it means the admins get used to dnf/yum, rpm and all RedHat quirks, so RedHat benefits from that. If the company wants RHEL support it is a small skip and a jump to RedHat Enterprise Linux.
If this is IBM driven, they are making a big mistake, and IBM should know better. The reason why they went into Linux in the first place (in the 90s) was that their customers Sys Admins ran Linux boxes, and more or less requested IBM do so. To ignore them now is stupid.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
