Virtualization and modernization training for manufacturers

For global manufacturing enterprises, the transition to cloud-native technologies is often led by necessity —whether it is the retirement of a virtualization platform or the approach of a critical support deadline.

For one global food producer, the end of life for its virtualization solution presented a choice: it could make a lateral move to a standard hypervisor or take a strategic leap to Red Hat® OpenShift® Virtualization. It chose modernization to embrace DevOps and containers but faced a significant internal skills gap regarding Kubernetes and cloud-native lifecycles.

Meanwhile, a global leader in urban mobility products and services faced a more urgent crisis. After an internal migration attempt stalled, it was left with a hard deadline before its existing Red Hat OpenShift clusters were set to cease operations. With only 9 weeks remaining, the company faced the prospect of halting service operations, which would cost millions of dollars in lost revenue per week.

In situations such as this, organizations frequently do not have the luxury of an open-ended timeline; they must migrate or face operational consequences. But if internal teams lack the specific cloud-native skills and the availability required to operate the new environments effectively, the consequences can be severe.

Selecting and purchasing the right software is a great start, but it is not always enough on its own. When manufacturers face the combined challenge of managing the risks of modernization and a scarcity of internal expertise, success requires immediate expert collaboration and a strategy to elevate their teams’ capabilities.

Red Hat Consulting can step in to address the unique constraints of each manufacturer, blending hands-on implementation with immersive training.

For the urban mobility products manufacturer, Red Hat Consulting executed a high-speed upgrade to Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated 4. Because the customer’s production code did not match its configuration repository, the Red Hat team had to reverse engineer applications and move source code into a proper control system. Working alongside the customer’s lean IT team, Red Hat provided mentorship to ensure that internal staff could manage the environment moving forward.

For the food producer, however, the focus was on creating a cultural shift. While architects designed the new Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization environment, they simultaneously conducted workshops to bridge the business’s knowledge gaps. Red Hat experts delivered targeted training on everything from Red Hat OpenShift basics to Red Hat OpenShift AI, teaching an infrastructure team that lacked lifecycle development knowledge how to properly architect clusters, use containers effectively, and then continue to modernize the infrastructure in the future.

By working with Red Hat for both execution and enablement, manufacturers can transform potential crises into exciting opportunities for growth. Specific outcomes can include:

• Maintaining revenue streams: The urban mobility products manufacturer completed its migration within the critical 9-week window, avoiding service interruptions and preventing millions in potential revenue loss.
• Modernizing environments: The food producer successfully migrated 100% of its virtual machines to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, gaining scalability and high availability.
• Establishing best practices: Teams moved from ad hoc management to structured DevOps approaches, with production code now properly tracked in source control systems.
• Developing workforces: From infrastructure teams to data scientists, teams gained the confidence to use cloud-native platforms correctly, moving away from traditional virtualization habits.
• Building future-ready operations: Both organizations laid important groundwork for innovation, including the adoption of AI and hybrid cloud capabilities.

The right engagement can take relationships beyond a standard vendor-client transaction into a strategic collaboration where Red Hat Consulting absorbs significant project risks and fills operational gaps. Initial project scopes do not always fully account for the technical debts or skill deficits present in a manufacturer’s environment. A good collaboration can be built on Red Hat’s willingness to adapt immediately to the reality on the ground.

For the urban mobility products manufacturer, its production environment had suffered from severe ‘code drift’, where running applications did not match their code repositories. Rather than halting the project, Red Hat Consulting actively reverse-engineered several applications and moved the source code into a proper control system to ensure future manageability.

At the food producer, the project scope was technically for design and deployment. However, the client wanted to work with a Red Hat Certified Architect to learn the system. While this slowed the build, the architect pivoted to provide on-site training simultaneously. To ensure that the original deadline was met despite this slowdown, the Red Hat team worked non-billable hours to keep the project on track.

Business relationships can involve Red Hat taking ownership of roadblocks that are technically outside its direct control, acting as an advocate for the client against third-party vendors and internal bureaucracy.

Managing third-party vendors: The food producer faced a critical blockage where third-party storage drivers were incompatible with its new environment. Red Hat took over management of this issue, holding weekly calls with senior engineers at the vendor to pressure them into releasing the necessary drivers, ensuring that the migration could actually occur.

Challenging internal bureaucracy: The urban mobility products manufacturer had internal testing protocols that took a week or more per environment—a timeline that would have made the 9-week deadline impossible. The Red Hat team had to push back against the customer’s leadership to expedite these checks and balances, ensuring that the project did not fail due to the client’s own processes.

Recognizing that manufacturing clients can be under-resourced, Red Hat can deploy additional services that are not strictly part of the initial commercial agreement to ensure that teams are not left stranded after go-live.

For the urban mobility products manufacturer, which had a lean IT team dependent on a single architect, Red Hat used live chat software to provide real-time coaching. This allowed Red Hat to answer questions instantly and document key processes that had previously only existed in one employee’s head.

Toward the end of the engagement with the food producer, technical gaps remained regarding the storage drivers. Red Hat made the decision to send 2 additional experts for a week—outside the original scope—to implement the drivers, migrate the final virtual clusters, and validate the live migration, ensuring that 100% of the virtual machines were successfully moved.

Complex migrations often reveal underlying issues, from ‘code drift’ where production environments do not match documentation, to incompatibilities with third-party storage.

In these scenarios, Red Hat experts do more than install software; they act as key collaborators. Whether it is working non-billable hours to meet a go-live date or pressuring third-party vendors to release necessary drivers, the Red Hat team ensures project success.

By combining rigorous consulting implementation with comprehensive training workshops, manufacturers do not just survive their platform transitions—they emerge with more resilient systems and more capable teams.

Find out more about how Red Hat works with manufacturers across the world to implement strategies, elevate teams’ capabilities, and maintain operational continuity.

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