Partnering to power the next generation IT infrastructure - Cisco and Red Hat

It should be no surprise at this point that Red Hat is “all in” on our belief that OpenStack is the best platform to power the next generation IT infrastructure. In 2014 we've been working to expand both our customer base and our technology and product portfolio to help accelerate our journey in this space. We now have customer deployments across all major geographies with Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, spanning industry verticals including financial services, government, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, technology, telecommunications and education. Our upstream community leadership in OpenStack continues, as does our industry leadership in bringing together the broadest partner ecosystem – all aimed at delivering production-ready OpenStack to customers while driving even more innovation.

One thing we’ve heard time and again from customers is that they trust Red Hat’s unmatched enterprise open source know-how to “do OpenStack right.” And, that’s exactly what we’re committed to doing. Part of this commitment means we work with industry leaders to fuel even more innovation, and to bring the power of “open” - and OpenStack - to an expanded range of enterprise and service provider customers around the globe. One of those leaders we’re proud to be collaborating with is Cisco.

 

Cisco, of course, is a longtime Red Hat strategic partner. They share our vision that the future of IT is the open hybrid cloud. In September, to bring our shared vision to life, we expanded our collaboration with the aim of developing and delivering the world’s most comprehensive, open hybrid cloud solutions. If you missed that announcement, read it here, along with some added thoughts from my colleague Bryan Che.

 

A key part of that announcement was a new integrated infrastructure solution based on Cisco UCS for OpenStack-based cloud deployments. Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Red Hat OpenStack brings together Cisco UCS, Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform to help customers streamline deployment and operation of OpenStack-based private clouds.

 

Cisco’s Jim McHugh wrote a great post about Cisco UCS Integrated Infrastructure for Red Hat OpenStack, saying:

 

This offering is the combination of the Industry leading UCS Integrated Infrastructure with the industry leading Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform into a set of solutions – with accompanying Bill of Materials (BOM), 24x7 solution support and professional services -- based on Cisco and Red Hat Validated Designs to accelerate the deployment of OpenStack-based clouds. With Cisco UCSO, mid-market and enterprise customers will be able to lower the risk associated with their clouddeployments while retaining control and choice over their environments with open and interoperable cloud architectures.

 

While adoption of OpenStack has been growing, customers continue to express concerns about the enterprise readiness of OpenStack, its ability to provide a complete solution and potential complexity of deployment. By partnering with Red Hat and offering Cisco UCSO -- which is backed by our professional services -- Cisco and Red Hat will be able to address many of these concerns. Red Hat’s excellent track record in the open source community can provide our joint customers with the performance, scalability, and security they need for their private or hybrid cloud deployment.

 

One key theme that will undoubtedly surface at this week’s OpenStack Summit in Paris is that collaboration and a strong, vibrant ecosystem is helping to accelerate OpenStack from “enterprise promise” to an “enterprise reality.” Red Hat is proud to be playing a leadership role, and powered by the virtuous feedback loop from global customer deployments and strong industry backing from the likes of Cisco, we believe OpenStack is truly on a fast track to becoming an enterprise reality.