Transform your applications with Red Hat and Google Cloud

Organizations use multiple technologies and methodologies to transform and modernize their applications and workloads.

Innovative applications are at the core of modern business. They connect organizations, partners, and customers to deliver valuable user experiences for all. Today, organizations are transforming their application portfolios to increase customer engagement, create differentiated services, improve operational efficiency, and compete in fast-changing markets. At the same time, organizations must also maintain their existing technology infrastructure and business processes, taking critical time and resources away from strategic and innovative projects.

An incremental, ongoing approach to application transformation is needed for success. While each organization’s journey is different, there are several common themes and initiatives.

Hybrid and multicloud strategies

Hybrid and multicloud strategies are central to application development and modernization. In fact, 89% of organizations have a multicloud strategy in place today, with 73% implementing a hybrid cloud strategy using at least 1 public and 1 private cloud environment.¹ 

By distributing workloads across on-site infrastructure and public cloud platforms, developers can take advantage of the unique strengths of each environment—from cost efficiency to performance optimization and regulatory compliance. Support for microservices architectures, containerization, and orchestration tools in modern cloud deployments let teams build cloud-native, resilient applications that can dynamically scale and recover from localized failures. And with automation and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines optimized for multi-environment deployments, development teams can adopt more efficient DevOps practices. The result is an agile, distributed application development ecosystem that can better respond to evolving business needs and market demands.

AI technologies

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping application development, both as a tool for enhancing development processes and as a core component of modern applications. Accordingly, 78% of organizations are using or plan to use AI to support application modernization efforts.² Developers are increasingly integrating generative AI (gen AI) models and traditional AI-driven analytics to create smarter, more responsive applications that interact naturally with users. And by integrating these AI technologies into cloud services, development teams can experiment with and deploy new intelligent features efficiently and in less time. Gen AI tools also assist developers in writing, debugging, and refactoring code. These systems reduce routine manual tasks, allowing teams to focus on more complex and creative aspects of software design. Together, these tools and technologies not only improve the efficiency and quality of application development but also help organizations rapidly adapt to evolving market demands and technological advancements.

Operational resilience

Operational resilience is a critical focus in application development, ensuring that applications remain available when unexpected disruptions occur. This trend emphasizes designing systems that can maintain or rapidly resume critical operations as workload demands change or infrastructure issues arise. Key practices include incorporating redundancy, automated failover mechanisms, and built-in fault tolerance capabilities—along with regular testing—to improve system robustness. Observability and real-time monitoring, tracing, and alerting mechanisms are also essential, allowing teams to detect issues earlier and respond proactively. As a result, developers can build applications that not only perform well under ideal conditions but are also equipped to handle the inevitable challenges of a complex digital landscape.

Security

Security is now a critical discipline in application development, with security practices integrated early and often in the development lifecycle. For example:

• Embedding static and dynamic analysis tools into CI/CD pipelines lets developers detect and address vulnerabilities before the software reaches production.
• DevSecOps practices foster collaboration between development, operations, and security teams and ensure that security is a shared responsibility.
• Zero trust architectures and robust identity and access management (IAM) practices help development teams safeguard sensitive data and operations with strict authentication and authorization protocols.

With an emphasis on secure-by-design principles, modern development practices ensure that security is not an afterthought but a fundamental aspect of the application’s architecture.

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is a central technology in application development. With its ability to manage containerized applications at scale and a large ecosystem of tools and extensions—including service meshes, operator frameworks, and multicluster management solutions—Kubernetes helps to increase innovation and operational efficiency across development organizations.

Managed Kubernetes services simplify cluster management by handling control plane operations, upgrades, and security patches, allowing development teams to focus on building and deploying applications rather than managing infrastructure. Using a single source of truth for Kubernetes configurations, GitOps helps organizations enhance operational consistency and speed development cycles, as development teams can rapidly release updates and roll back changes when necessary. Finally, advancements in automation and the introduction of Kubernetes operators help streamline management of complex stateful applications by encapsulating operational knowledge reusable content.

Cloud services

Streamlining IT operations can boost speed and efficiency. Cloud services can offload time-consuming platform and infrastructure management to dedicated third-party teams, so your IT operations, security, and development team can concentrate on innovation and core competencies rather than ongoing platform or resource management. 

Container-based hybrid cloud application platforms provide an ideal foundation for application development and transformation. These platforms can deliver the agility, consistency, efficiency, and scalability needed to build, deploy, run, and manage applications across datacenter, edge, and public cloud infrastructures. Even so, integrating these platforms into complex IT environments yourself can be difficult and time consuming. When moving to a container-based application platform, you must reassess how you perform common operations and manage security and compliance, while developing your staff’s container expertise. Adopting a fully managed, cloud-based application platform can simplify workload deployment and scaling, streamline operations, and speed time to value compared to in-house solutions. With on-demand consumption models and expert guidance, your teams can focus on strategic projects that support your business initiatives. 

To effectively and efficiently build, deploy, and manage applications in containers and Kubernetes, you need a unified, integrated hybrid cloud application platform.

Look for a platform that includes the following features and capabilities.

A consistent foundation for applications

A secure Linux® container host operating system and Kubernetes orchestration and cluster services—including automated installation, over-the-air updates, monitoring, and logging—provide consistent operations and lifecycle management across your environment. The ability to run both existing virtualized and new cloud-native applications lets you consolidate all workloads onto a single platform for streamlined operations and costs.

Cloud-native development and operations

Platform, application, data, and developer services—including CI/CD pipelines, integrated development environments (IDEs), programming languages, runtimes, build tools, observability capabilities, and application programming interface (API) management—provide capabilities for efficiently and consistently building, deploying, and managing intelligent, cloud-native applications.

Choose a platform for application innovation

An ideal hybrid cloud application platform should incorporate all of the services and capabilities needed to effectively modernize existing applications and develop new cloud-native applications, while offering deployment flexibility, expert managed services, and integrated AI-driven insights that support intelligent automation, real-time performance optimization, and data-driven innovation.

Red Hat and Google Cloud provide a foundation for hybrid and multicloud environments to support your business goals. Our solutions can help you speed application development and innovation, improve business insight and intelligence, and streamline operations and control costs.

With flexible configuration, an open source, security-focused foundation, global network infrastructure, and advanced data analytics, we give you the tools and technologies you need to build and operate hybrid and multicloud environments effectively and efficiently. Together, Red Hat® OpenShift® and Google Cloud form an integrated hybrid cloud environment that supports cloud-native application development, data management, DevOps, analytics, and AI/ML technologies.

Deploying Red Hat OpenShift on Google Cloud delivers a broad range of benefits for your organization. Here are some key features and benefits of our solutions.

Complete, integrated platform

Deploy an integrated infrastructure software foundation, cloud-native application and data services, and security and management controls with a modular platform that is trusted by industry innovators around the world. Native capabilities—as well as integration with Red Hat Application Services, cloud services, and certified partner ecosystem—deliver speed, efficiency, and scalability across a broad selection of technologies and applications.

Built-in developer tools

Access integrated, certified tools, development environments, and self-service capabilities that let developers code at speed and improve consistency throughout application lifecycles. Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces and a command-line interface (CLI) give developers consistent, zero-configuration development environments, while maintaining centralized control for IT operations. Red Hat OpenShift Serverless, Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh, and Red Hat Application Services offer self-service access to the runtimes, frameworks, API management, data streaming, and event-driven services that developers need to be productive.

Streamlined management and automation

Adopt CI/CD approaches with included, integrated tools. Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines and Red Hat OpenShift GitOps bring native CI/CD and GitOps capabilities to your teams, so you can automate application delivery and use Git as a single source of trust for your environment. Support for Kubernetes Operators and Helm simplifies application lifecycle management. Deploy and manage your preferred partner applications more easily and confidently using certified operators and Helm charts that encompass detailed vendor expertise.

Built-in security and DevSecOps capabilities

Adopt DevSecOps practices with integrated features and protection. Red Hat OpenShift includes core security features—like access controls, network security, and an enterprise registry with a built-in scanner—to protect your platform from the start. Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security (included with OpenShift Platform Plus) delivers consistent security and compliance capabilities that integrate directly with your DevSecOps tools and workflows to enforce best practices. And you can access additional security capabilities—like runtime threat detection, lifecycle vulnerability management, and risk profiling—through our certified partner ecosystem.

Plus, OpenShift Dedicated on Google Cloud is compliant with International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 2.

Integrated AI/ML capabilities

Add intelligence to your cloud-native applications more easily. Integration with  Google Cloud AI and ML products, Red Hat OpenShift AI, and AI/ML products from our certified partner ecosystem let you implement machine learning operations (MLOps). You can create a self-service MLOps platform for data scientists, data engineers, and developers to build models, incorporate them into applications, and perform inferencing tasks.

Multiple deployment options

Deploy and manage Red Hat OpenShift yourself or take advantage of a fully managed and supported service on Google Cloud. OpenShift Dedicated provides complete, full-stack environments with all necessary services, simple self-service options, and expert 24x7 support via stringent service-level agreements (SLAs). This flexible approach ensures you can choose the option that best fits your organization’s needs.

Flexible pricing and streamlined procurement

Achieve the right balance of flexibility and cost for your organization with your choice of purchasing options. You can buy Red Hat OpenShift and OpenShift Dedicated directly from the Google Cloud Marketplace to simplify purchasing, billing, and subscription management. All costs associated with your deployment are combined into a single bill from Google Cloud. On-demand, consumption-based pricing lets you pay only for the instances you use. You can also take advantage of discounted pricing with multiyear, reserved instance purchasing models. Plus, you can use your Google Cloud Commit for Red Hat OpenShift deployments, including those purchased via Google Cloud resellers.

Finally, our private offer options give you lower pricing in return for your commitment to Red Hat. We can construct private offers for Red Hat products purchased both through the Google Cloud Marketplace and via the Google Cloud console. Private offers are available directly from Red Hat or via our reseller partners, and count against your committed spend agreements with Google Cloud.

Red Hat and Google Cloud bring together everything you need to modernize your existing workloads and build modern, cloud-native applications.

Integrated portfolio and services

Build an ideal software foundation for all application transformation use cases using a complete, integrated portfolio of products and cloud services that work together reliably. Use services like Google Cloud Smart Analytics Platform,  Google Cloud AI and ML products, and Google Cloud security and identity products to build insights, intelligence, and security into your applications.

Expert consulting services 

Get help modernizing, migrating, and developing applications with expert services, detailed guidance, and practical tools that incorporate culture, process, and technology.

Validated patterns

Deploy the applications your business relies on more rapidly with validated deployment patterns. These patterns are detailed, customizable deployments created for specific use cases and are based on real customer implementations.

Migration tools

Take advantage of Red Hat migration tools and the Konveyor community to help you plan your transformation journey and move your applications to Red Hat OpenShift.

Certified partner ecosystem

Access a broad ecosystem of Red Hat certified ISV products to customize your environment with the application, data, AI/ML, developer, and IT operations services that work best for your organization.

You can use Red Hat OpenShift solutions on Google Cloud for a variety of use cases. Here are a few examples of what you can achieve with an innovative, integrated hybrid cloud foundation for application development and deployment.

Adopt AI

AI is becoming a critical tool for businesses that want to boost innovation and stay ahead in rapidly changing markets. In fact, 83% of IT leaders say gen AI models that use their own business data will give their organization a significant competitive advantage.⁹ 

Even so, for many organizations, the journey to full-scale AI deployment comes with significant challenges. Efficient AI workload management requires substantial compute resources, including modern hardware acceleration, continuous monitoring capabilities, and comprehensive governance. Skills gaps can hinder development, deployment, and management of AI workloads, so you may need to invest in employee training or hire specialized talent. Finally, ensuring that AI training data and storage comply with security, regulatory, and industry standards is essential to avoid legal and operational risks.

Red Hat OpenShift solutions on Google Cloud integrate with Red Hat OpenShift AI to help you speed AI innovation and operational consistency at scale. As an enterprise-ready AI application platform, OpenShift AI lets data scientists, engineers, and developers collaborate to prepare data and train, fine-tune, serve, and monitor models. An open ecosystem of hardware and software partners lets you customize your deployment, knowing each component will work reliably together. And with bias and drift detection, access to hardware accelerators, and a centralized registry for sharing, deploying, and tracking models, OpenShift AI provides the flexibility your organization needs to rapidly deliver innovative AI solutions.

Read the webpage to learn more about the Red Hat AI portfolio.

Modernize and migrate virtual machines

Virtualization technologies are essential to modern datacenter operations, helping businesses reduce costs, improve resiliency, enhance efficiency, and meet sustainability goals. However, as IT complexity increases and virtualization solutions and offerings evolve, organizations must regularly reassess their virtualization strategies in response to emerging challenges. A unified approach to migrating and managing both virtual machines (VMs)and containers on a single application platform can help you reduce complexity, adapt to changing business conditions, and manage associated risks.

Red Hat OpenShift solutions on Google Cloud provide a foundation for both virtualized and cloud-native applications across hybrid, multicloud, and edge environments, so you can take advantage of the scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of Google Cloud even when running traditional virtualized applications. Included as a self-managed operator with Red Hat OpenShift on Google Cloud’s Bare Metal Solution and with OpenShift Dedicated, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization supports VM operations directly in the Red Hat OpenShift console. Create, manage, clone, and import VMs. Run containerized and VM workloads simultaneously in a single cluster. Manage VM network interfaces and storage disks. Live migrate VMs between cluster nodes.

Optimize storage for stateful applications in the cloud

Stateful applications like databases, messaging systems, and monitoring solutions require persistent storage to save data that needs to survive beyond the lifecycle of the application container. These storage solutions need to be managed to deliver high performance and availability while maximizing efficiency to be cost effective.

Red Hat OpenShift solutions on Google Cloud works with Google Cloud NetApp Volumes, a fully managed file storage solution that can provide persistent storage for stateful applications. Simply lift and optimize your critical shared file workloads to boost performance without refactoring or redesigning the applications. Automation and optimization controls, combined with instant, zero-footprint snapshots and volume clones, help reduce the amount of storage needed. Cross-region replication, cloning, and backups and instant data restoration provide business continuity in the event of unplanned data loss, ransomware, or data corruption.

Read the article to learn more about this integration.

Together, Red Hat and Google Cloud simplify application development, transformation, and modernization.

With Red Hat OpenShift solutions on Google Cloud, you can take advantage of a unified foundation, integrated products and services, a large partner ecosystem, and expert support and services to transform your applications with less effort.

Get started today: red.ht/googlemarketplace