Vizuri helps their customers transform their business by solving complex problems with cutting-edge technology solutions. To achieve this, they needed a technology partner to work with to help its clients move to a cloud-native environment. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform emerged as a natural fit.
Red Hat and Vizuri continue to benefit from their long partnership. Red Hat not only helps Vizuri identify industry solutions but also endorses those solutions, and provides exposure. Red Hat OpenShift enables Vizuri to develop a solution once and immediately help customers across all cloud environments.
Benefits
- Partnership program identified, helped develop, and endorsed novel industry solutions
- Increased exposure and influence in the sales cycle
- OpenShift allowed customers to be sought across cloud environments
Solving complex business problems
Vizuri was established in 2002 as the innovation hub of federal systems integrator AEM Corporation. Based in the United States, Vizuri helps federal and commercial clients adopt emerging technologies to solve challenging business problems. They use more than 300 business consultants and their deep technology and industry knowledge to assess challenges before architecting and implementing solutions.
“We nurture our clients into a cloud-native environment so they can incrementally modernize their applications,” said Joe Dickman, Founder and Senior Vice President of Vizuri. “We also help them streamline operations by automating repetitive tasks and simplifying integrations.”
When it comes to industry solutions, Vizuri’s strength lies in process and decision management. Their underwriting solution framework harnesses the power of Red Hat Process Automation Manager, Red Hat Decision Manager, and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. The framework not only automates decisions to reduce the load on underwriters and provide fast turnaround, but also controls risk by enforcing uniform decisions across multiple systems. Its companion solution—which provides a safe, secure, and compliant space for insurers to do business with service providers—uses Red Hat 3scale API Management.
Drawing on the power of open source
From day one, Vizuri’s mission has been to be the best. Back in 2002, Vizuri was newly established, and open source was just emerging. Dickman didn't want Vizuri to establish partnerships with the larger proprietary providers and become lost. Instead, he chose to partner with specialist open source middleware provider JBoss®. Vizuri became a Red Hat partner when Red Hat acquired JBoss in 2006. Dickman appreciates how the two companies have “grown up together” and that fast-growing Red Hat “has always continued to value Vizuri.”
Vizuri shares Red Hat’s passion for drawing on the power of open source to shape the future. “Open source is transparent. We like that it is truly open,” said Dickman. “Red Hat has shown that software can be developed by a community and brought to market by an organization for the betterment of everybody.”
Guiding organizational change
Vizuri works closely as a partner with Red Hat. “Red Hat is my number one vendor relationship,” said Dickman. “Our partnership is one of the most sincere relationships I've ever had. We never have to worry because Red Hat is always true to their word. Red Hat gives us access to early releases and to its executives. But what I like about Red Hat is that its people listen. They seek our advice and allow us to influence their thinking.”
Moreover, emerging technologies such as cloud, Linux containers, microservices, Kubernetes and the move to cloud-native application development, are changing the way applications are built. “Red Hat is changing the way organizations think about developing software,” said Dickman. “We are working together to help guide the organizational change needed for companies to adopt containers, cloud, and microservices successfully.”
Growing with a trusted partner
Identifying and endorsing industry solutions
The Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider Program (CCSP) helped Vizuri develop an innovative insurance solution and take it to market. Red Hat helped Vizuri to package several Red Hat software technologies into a comprehensive offering, so multiple clients within the same segment could use it. “Red Hat helped us shape our thoughts,” said Dickman, “then provided financial funding to help us bring our solution to the market with exposure through channel programs and venue events.”
Those events include InsureTech Connect, where Red Hat helped Vizuri spread the word about the innovative solution for insurance underwriting born from their partnership. “Red Hat stands beside us,” said Dickman, “providing the affiliation that endorses our approach to modernizing insurance.”
The CCSP program brings with it a community built around a high level of trust, transparency, and collaboration. Dickman explains how this is part of the Red Hats ethos, with Red Hat building the program because it is open about relying on specialist partners for building and selling industry solutions. “Red Hat is the product specialist for product sales, and we are the subject matter experts using those products in the industry,” adds Dickman.
Increasing exposure and enabling influence
The Red Hat Apex partner program invites a select number of solution providers that have demonstrated deep industry knowledge and innovative use of Red Hat technologies to work directly with high-volume transactional resellers.
Participating partners enjoy exposure along with an opportunity to influence deals. Red Hat also supports them in taking their own solutions to market and provides access to resources, including training and certification. Vizuri’s commitment is rewarded with affiliation, promotion, and accreditation. “Red Hat highlights our knowledge and skills,” said Dickman. “It uses its promotion engine and visibility in the market as an innovative leader to raise the prominence of value partners such as Vizuri.”
Red Hat provides a unique compensation model for those who commit. “The Apex partner program allows partners like Vizuri to invest in the pursuit of sales for Red Hat,” said Dickman. “Red Hat investment offsets cost of sale with compensation at the back-end so Vizuri doesn't lose out if the purchase goes to another reseller—often a high-volume distributor.”
Driving continued growth
The Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform allows systems to operate consistently across multiple compute environments, enabling users to build open hybrid clouds. This uniform implementation across diverse distributions helps Vizuri offer more tailored solutions across industries. “OpenShift means Vizuri can seek customers across cloud environments—whether public, on-prem, or hybrid,” said Dickman. “We can develop once and deploy that same workload to any cloud environment running OpenShift.”
Embracing the cloud
All of Vizuri's solutions are cloud-native and built with Red Hat OpenShift. “Cloud is no longer if or when—it’s now,” said Dickman. “And OpenShift is helping organizations solve problems faster to leapfrog the competition. It’s helping them innovate iteratively, develop smaller applications more quickly, and get to the cloud faster.”
Red Hat OpenShift is also helping organizations move to the cloud by providing a platform that allows both legacy and modern systems to operate side by side. “Around half of containers built today are for existing systems,” said Dickman. “OpenShift provides a consistent operating framework for legacy systems, as well as a new and dynamic, compute environment for microservices.”
Building on immense success with Red Hat
Vizuri’s partnership with Red Hat spans more than a decade and continues to grow. The company now plans to invest in a new business line in 2020: healthcare. Building on a foundation of Red Hat OpenShift, Vizuri plans to offer a digital platform to improve decision making and efficiency in the healthcare industry.
“Insurance and healthcare invest in IT to offset cost,” said Dickman. “These two markets can truly benefit from Red Hat products and solutions. Red Hat is already assembling resources to help us with our new business line. We are confident that Red Hat will continue to work with us to deliver novel solutions to complex business problems so we can continue to grow our business on an open source foundation.”
About Vizuri
Vizuri transforms businesses via creative software solutions, producing standout work in four core areas: business rules and process management, cloud enablement, enterprise integration, and microservices and containers. They have a proud history of firsts, including first Red Hat OpenShift partner (2013), first recipient of Red Hat’s Partner of Excellence Award in North America (2017), and first Commercial Leading Edge Partner of the Year (2018).
