How Red Hat is evolving to keep the world connected

The world is changing rapidly - and the critical importance of connection has never been more clear. Last year, many organizations were forced to rethink their day-to-day operations as workforces across the globe went remote. Industry buzzwords like “digital transformation” that may have been five year plans became overnight priorities for organizations across the board. The communications industry was, and continues to be, poised to help industries tackle many of these enormous challenges. 

While communication service providers (CSPs) have always been tasked with driving connectivity, current global dynamics have magnified this opportunity. According to a TM forum report sponsored by Red Hat, nearly 40% of CSP executives surveyed said they are well along the road to digital transformation and seeing significant benefits, a substantial improvement from the 20% to 25% in the previous four years. CSPs are meeting this moment by helping businesses minimize the operational impact of these sudden market shifts. 

At MWC in Barcelona this year, we saw the industry is ready to meet the needs of their customers with outstanding achievements in radio access network (RAN) technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), edge computing and more. 

At the center of these advancements stand CSPs and the rapid deployment of 5G technologies, which can help enable new enterprise services for greater revenue growth. As we stand at this industry inflection point, Red Hat has prioritized a few things to help CSPs innovate, scale, optimize and meet the challenges of today including:

• Putting open hybrid cloud at the center of everything we do. Open hybrid cloud technologies from Red Hat give customers and partners an infrastructure backbone to support a wide variety of solutions. Customers like Verizon have built their 5G core on Red Hat OpenShift. OpenShift provides a containerized infrastructure that helps Verizon drive 5G and edge computing innovation without overwhelming complexity.

• Leveraging a strong partner ecosystem. The power and scale of next-generation networks are not just delivered by a single vendor, but by an entire ecosystem of partners united behind open standards and building across a common platform. Additionally, through partnerships with OEMs, cloud providers, systems integrators and software providers, Red Hat has helped CSPs continue to be a central part of the value chain. We recently joined Telenor and other partners in winning a GLOMO award for the world's most diverse multi-vendor 5G standalone solutions.

• A customer first mentality. Red Hat maintains a customer-centric mindset and supports customers with solutions that fit their needs year after year. Red Hat continues to make a real difference for customers with our open source expertise and technologies.

Change is continuous 

At the crux of evolution there will always be change. This is a good thing. As Red Hat continues to be an enabler of change and better meet the needs of the global communications industry, we are evolving our approach to accelerate our commitment to be the number one hybrid cloud partner to service providers. We have an expanded global Technology, Media and Entertainment (TME) organization focused on driving opportunities with service providers and the media and entertainment sector across the world. 

What does this mean? We have combined our regional teams into a single aligned global unit to keep our focus strong. It means that we will be able to get more impact from our TME investments and initiatives. The need for connectivity remains consistent from region to region - and so will our business. 

With this change comes a more focused customer centric mindset, an even stronger partner ecosystem, and improved operational excellence. This global unit focused on the needs of the industry means innovation accelerates. Keeping the world connected is no small task and Red Hat’s global TME organization will be here to help make it a reality.