Architecting the way: Andrew Block

One of Andrew Block’s favorite things about Red Hat? Being able to contribute back to the open source community. He says, “As long as you are innovating and making yourself better, let’s go ahead and work better together.” 

Block is among the first Distinguished Architects at Red Hat. Distinguished Architects are senior-level technical contributors who've continued to advance in their careers working directly with customers and applying experience and knowledge of Red Hat technologies.

We had a chance to chat with Block about his experience working with Red Hat customers and the innovation that architects can help bring to their organizations.

Distinguished architects at your service

A Distinguished Architect works directly with customers and is a part of the Red Hat Services organization, which helps translate technology investments into measurable and meaningful business outcomes throughout the customer’s entire journey. 

While Block may boast the label of an architect on paper, he certainly does not allow the title to limit him to planning and consulting - he prefers to get hands-on into delivering solutions. What truly drives Block in his career is thinking outside the box and leading his own adventure in bettering others.

Starting as a consultant focusing on Red Hat Application Services, Block has ardently avoided being siloed into one technology, preferring to contribute and provide expertise across many technologies and find ways to integrate them better together. 

For example, when Fuse Fabric, a Java-based container service, was available on the market, Block had started to see the potential impact of containerizing applications and sandboxing them, and how it might revolutionize the IT industry. 

Once Docker and Kubernetes were released, Block immersed himself in the new container communities to evangelize the use of containerization, beginning with [Kubernetes] 1.0. While Docker helped bring containerization to the mainstream, Kubernetes is critical for managing containers at scale. He says, “Kubernetes took hold and is front and center of both the community and Red Hat to this day.” 

He’s now often found working with Red Hat’s containerization and automation platforms and is working on various projects to help bring automation to middleware portfolios in the open source community. 

Global reach

Block’s community-wide contributions, knowledge, and professionalism have created quite the reputation for his impact globally, and whether he’s working with customers in-person or remotely, he brings his best. The customer’s Block works with often remarks on the compassion he brings to every engagement, meeting, and email to understand the situation, regardless of what it may be.

The advice Block offers to customers is direct, namely, “Don’t boil the ocean. Find a use case." He adds, "Don’t say: I’m going develop this entire program that’s going to solve world peace and change my organization. You can have good intentions and really good innovative thoughts around that. But are you actually going to be able to achieve that?”

Instead, he suggests focusing on achieving smaller goals and narrowing their focus to maintain the forward momentum toward larger success, celebrating and showcasing the wins along the way. 

Helping customers find success

Block and Red Hat Services are ready to help your organization realize its middleware, automation, and containerization goals. If you’re interested in learning more, check out some of these customers who embraced comprehensive frameworks, integration solutions, process automation, and improved runtimes:

• PERKESO - Malaysia’s social security organization modernized its user experience and digital services using a Red Hat Fuse, Red Hat Process Automation Manager, Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, and more.

• Lotte Card - The Korean payment card company worked with Red Hat Consulting to deliver Red Hat OpenShift Platform and Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform to create a flexible, cloud-based environment for its customer service system.

• Shinhan Bank - As Korea’s oldest bank, Shinhan and Red Hat teamed up to build a central processing system for their banking service using Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat 3scale, Red Hat Fuse, and more.

Find out how Block and Red Hat Services can help your organization today.