Red Hat has announced the global launch of the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider programme.
Replacing Red Hat’s existing Certified Cloud Provider programme, the Certified Cloud and Service Provider programme expands Red Hat’s cloud ecosystem to include and support distributors, managed service providers and other partners that are heavily involved in all aspects of hybrid cloud build-out, not just multi-tenant public clouds.
As the model for cloud providers expands to include private cloud build-outs, Linux container-based infrastructure and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solutions, additional flexibility is needed to help these providers better meet customer needs for cloud-based Red Hat technologies, the company said.
The new program is intended to meet this need by broadening partner support and by expanding the choice of Red Hat solutions available to partners to include Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA, OpenShift, Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, JBoss Middleware and Gluster Storage.
As Red Hat continues to focus on delivering open source innovation to enterprise IT, the Certified Cloud and Service Provider portfolio is anticipated to grow to encompass these new, enterprise-ready technologies. Additionally, customers are able to use Red Hat Cloud Access to deploy certain Red Hat product subscriptions on Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider cloud offerings in an integrated and seamless manner.
Red Hat’s Certified Cloud and Service Provider designation is awarded to Red Hat partners following validation by Red Hat. Each provider must meet testing and certification requirements to demonstrate that they can deliver a safe, scalable, supported and consistent environment for enterprise cloud deployments. The globally-unified programme provides customers, independent software vendors (ISVs), and partners with the confidence that Red Hat product experts have validated a given solution so that implementations can begin with a solid foundation.
Michael Ferris, Senior Director, Business Architecture, Red Hat, “Much like enterprise IT itself, the world of cloud computing is constantly evolving, especially with the growing promise of hybrid cloud approaches and Linux container-based architectures. The Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider program is de-signed to encompass nearly all service provider models, spanning the public cloud to on-site managed services, offering our customers a secure, stable and trusted partner ecosystem upon which to build their next-generation IT projects using Red Hat solutions.”
At launch, Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Providers include 13 of the 15 service providers named in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Worldwide1with Red Hat’s overall cloud partner ecosystem growing at 58 percent from the previous year.
