SIRE Technology achieves near 100% availability with Red Hat

Managed service provider SIRE Technology (SIRE) needed a robust, reliable, and scalable OpenStack platform that worked seamlessly 24x7. As a leading provider of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), SIRE’s customers risked losing significant revenues if their platforms experienced downtime. With its managed services customers experiencing peak demand during the evening, a move to Red Hat OpenStack Platform ensured their platforms would run reliably regardless of loads. SIRE received support from a knowledgeable Red Hat team from day one—even before the platform was generating licensing revenue. Now, thanks to the improved scalability of Red Hat technology and its commercial model, SIRE is positioning itself to become the service provider to service providers, giving its customers the support they need to grow.

Benefits:

• Delivered near 100% availability due to a robust and reliable platform 
• Offered expert Red Hat support from day one
• Gained the flexibility needed to expand to new locations 

As a managed service provider offering IaaS, SIRE needed a cloud computing platform that wouldn’t let their customers down. Established more than 30 years ago, SIRE delivers local IaaS solutions to customers across industries, spanning travel and transport, e-gaming, and financial services, including fintech firms.  

Having identified a need to offer its customers a true cloud experience, SIRE’s first venture into OpenStack was building a public e-gaming cloud platform in Gibraltar. “OpenStack delivered a true multitenanted platform for our cloud service,” said Jason Bamford, SIRE Sales Director. “It also allowed us to offer our customers the full self-service experience they expect from public cloud infrastructures.” SIRE decided to adopt Red Hat OpenStack because it is built for cloud computing, unlike many virtualization products, which grew into cloud computing.

For the first implementation, SIRE decided to build and integrate the community editions of OpenStack platform; however, stability problems quickly caused service-quality issues. “When our customers started to put serious workloads on the platform, it started falling apart,” said Bamford. “The software-defined networking elements would start dropping traffic.” Many of those events occurred between late evening and midnight, when activity was at its peak and the platform was at its most critical. With multiple customers processing upwards of 2,000 real money transactions  per second, any peak-time outage could potentially cost SIRE’s customers many thousands of pounds in lost revenue, making a robust and reliable platform crucial for business and reputation.

SIRE’s original technology stack required a complex upgrade from the self-maintained version of OpenStack, coupled with a need for new hardware infrastructure. Enterprise open source offers greater stability, and SIRE concluded that it needed an enterprise OpenStack product and support to rely on. “We liked OpenStack but needed a solid platform that would work around the clock, could be upgraded, and was supportable and scalable for the future,” said Bamford. 

 After becoming familiar with OpenStack and recognizing it as the best option, SIRE examined several leading enterprise distributions. SIRE selected Red Hat OpenStack Platform as its preferred solution provider. “Red Hat has taken the open source version of OpenStack and solidified it, putting processes around it,” said Bamford. “With Red Hat OpenStack Platform, you get a robust and repeatable deployment mechanism backed with support. This is something the open source community just can’t offer.”

As a public cloud provider, SIRE also needed the flexibility to rapidly scale up if a customer took on a heavier workload and to scale down when that workload reduced. “We need to align our software license spend with our business,” said Bamford. “Red Hat offers a licensing model where we pay a monthly figure based on usage, meaning that our fees move with our business.”

Having run OpenStack for a couple of years, the SIRE team was already familiar with its operation. However, the team was less familiar with an optimal installation process. Once again, SIRE turned to Red Hat to get the support needed to implement the required changes. “Red Hat really invested in us in those early days,” said Bamford. “They were getting tickets about quite basic things as we were still on a learning curve, yet they willingly helped us out.”

Since its implementation, SIRE has proudly advanced its Red Hat OpenStack Platform skills, becoming a Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider. Co-engineered with Red Hat Enterprise Linux® and running on bare metal servers, Red Hat OpenStack Platform provided a robust and highly scalable foundation for SIRE’s public cloud offering in Gibraltar which it delivers as a white-labeled, fully managed platform to the national telco.  It underpins smart parking, regulated e-gaming, and other services for approximately 25 entertainment companies licensed and regulated in the territory. 

Additionally, Red Hat Ceph® Storage provides open, simplified, and massively scalable storage for the wide range of workloads that SIRE customers experience. This software-defined storage allows SIRE to scale quickly to meet changing customer storage needs during periods of peak activity. 

Red Hat OpenStack Platform has provided the foundation for  private cloud environments built by SIRE for U.K. fintech customers. Moreover, SIRE’s sister company, GiBVault, provides the white-label version of the platform to Gibtelecom—offered to the end customers under the brand name Gibtelecom Cloud Platform. Gibtelecom is now building additional points of presence for its customers in Malta, Ireland, and Malaysia, with GiBVault and Red Hat OpenStack Platform at its core. “The technology and the licensing model of Red Hat OpenStack Platform gives us the flexibility to build new platforms in new locations on Gibtelecom’s infrastructure,” said Bamford. 

Delivered near 100% availability with a robust platform

Red Hat OpenStack Platform has provided SIRE with a robust and reliable platform that works 24x7, giving its customers confidence. “The community version of OpenStack would go down at high load times,” said Bamford. “That doesn’t happen anymore. I know Red Hat OpenStack Platform will keep running.”

Since going live in February 2021, SIRE has only experienced one issue. “Red Hat OpenStack Platform just works,” said Bamford. “Our out-of-hour teams are no longer having to resolve service-affecting incidents.”

SIRE benefits from Red Hat experts from day one

The SIRE team continues to receive valuable support from Red Hat. “I hear nothing but positive feedback from the team about the support we get from Red Hat,” said Bamford. “Red Hat knows its stuff; they’re professionals.” 

This support began on day one of SIRE’s relationship with Red Hat, who were invested in the company and building a successful implementation even before it was generating any revenue from its licensing agreement. 

Gained the flexibility needed to expand to new locations

Red Hat’s flexible, pay-as-you-use commercial model helped SIRE and Gibtelecom to innovate faster and enter new markets. Red Hat doesn’t demand software commercial revenue from SIRE if there are no fee-earning workloads—this applies to both SIRE and Gibtelecom’s cloud offerings, which are both built on Red Hat OpenStack Platform. “Red Hat gives SIRE and in turn Gibtelecom the flexibility to enter new markets,” said Bamford. “We only pay Red Hat when we’re earning revenues from our deployed licenses.” 

To date, this flexibility has allowed SIRE and Gibtelecom to launch new platforms in Malta, Malaysia, and Ireland, where SIRE provides and manages Red Hat OpenStack Platform, and Gibtelecom handles the hardware infrastructure and Internet connectivity. “The Red Hat commercial model means we can charge Gibtelecom a minimal amount to run Red Hat OpenStack Platform in the early days, as opposed to our partner spending large sums on a platform before it brings in customer revenues,” said Bamford.

SIRE plans to build on its successes with Red Hat OpenStack Platform by implementing Red Hat OpenShift®. Bamford describes today’s gaming industry as primarily container-based, running across both hyperscalers and local cloud environments. “A subset of the e-gaming offering must sit on an “in territory” local cloud platform for regulatory reasons,” said Bamford. “Our customers are requesting a contain-as-a-service platform that runs on our cloud. Using Red Hat OpenShift, running on Red Hat OpenStack Platform, we can deliver that with the most efficient use of our resources.” 

With a commercial model built to meet its specific needs, expert support on hand, and robust and scalable technology, SIRE can look forward to a bright future. Building on its service provider to service providers model, SIRE’s focus is now on positioning as a Red Hat OpenStack deployment specialist that can fully manage an entire platform life cycle for private and on-premise requirements. Red Hat technologies and support are crucial to achieving that ambition. “Being a service provider to a service provider—it’s all about the service,” said Bamford. With Red Hat OpenStack Platform, we’re confident in providing the exceptional service that is critical to SIRE’s success.”