Complete Cloud Package from Red Hat

Next month a complete cloud platform package will be available from Red Hat. This will include the vendor's Linux operating system, virtualization technology and hybrid cloud management tools.

The new offering will rival vCloud Suite from VMware, and increase competition between those software vendors. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization software already competes directly with VMware's flagship vSphere virtualization product.

Red Hat Enterprise OpenStack Platform will also be a part of the new Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure package, and this is the vendor's very much-anticipated commercial release of the OpenStack open-source cloud infrastructure software.

From July, Red Hat's OpenStack and cloud infrastructure offerings will both be generally available.

The president of products and technologies at Red Hat, Paul Cormier, stated: "Open source [technology] has really gone mainstream and driven the innovation of the cloud technologies that you see today. We're now taking that to the next level."

Linux operating system and Red Hat's OpenStack are merged through the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, and this can be distributed as a single subscription offering. Customers and partners of the company can build and provide OpenStack for production purposes, and this means that they can pay more attention to increasing the value of the services, applications and customizations.

Cormier commented on the pairing stating that combining Linux and OpenStack is similar to what is happening elsewhere in the marketplace. He said: "OpenStack and Linux are starting to intertwine together in terms of features that are dependent on each other."

Applications can be run consistently due to the OpenStack package over on-premise, virtual machines and cloud platforms.

Businesses and solution providers are able to develop and manage an infrastructure-as-a-service private cloud as a result of the new Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure package. Furthermore, the software package will include Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server, Red Hat Virtualization, Red Hat OpenStack and Red Hat CloudForms. The latter is a hybrid cloud management system which includes Red Hat technology that was acquired through the purchase of ManageIQ in December of last year.

The Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure package means that IT executives are able to manage cloud environments better, and this is the result of the package's IT process orchestration, governance and compliance, metering and chargeback, monitoring and alerting capabilities.

The Red Hat OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure Partner Network, which has been started by the company, strives to encourage companies to join its partner ecosystem on board with new products.

Key IT vendors which help the OpenStack and Cloud Infrastructure products, such as Cisco, Dell, IBM, Intel, Juniper Networks, Lenovo, NetApp and Symantec, were listed last week. In regard to channel partners, Red Hat stated that it is collaborating with "a small set of pilot solution provider and systems integrator partners in select geographies" in order to create and distribute solutions based on the offerings.

Mountain View, California-based Mirantis is one partner that is already on board. The company is a systems integrator that works with OpenStack. Mirantis' Fuel toolset will be tailored by Red Hat and Mirantis. This will allow the former to distribute Red Hat OpenStack and provide customers with implementation and integration services.

The president and CEO of Mirantis, Adrian Ionel, said: "The combination of Red Hat and Mirantis working together with customers to optimize OpenStack should substantially increase the speed of adoption, success, and overall confidence of companies in using the Red Hat OpenStack distribution and Mirantis' services and tools."

Other partners also noted approval of the latest move by Red Hat. The Chantilly, Virginia-based Vizuri is a Red Hat partner, and the account executive with that company, Pierre Duncan, stated: "We definitely see some opportunity for custom develop projects." Vizuri has already been working with the OpenStack team at Red Hat in order to bring the product to market.

Customer interest has been increased in Mainline Information Systems' cloud computing offerings. The program manager for cloud computing at that company stated that Red Hat's products in the developing Linux market "just plays into what the cloud market is calling for." He added that the adoption of cloud computing services is still in its early stages and he would like to see the private cloud products and services market grow faster.

Partners will be offered OpenStack certification by Red Hat, and the Red Hat Certified Solution Marketplace was also unveiled last week. This allows customers to find applications which have been created by partners that operate with Red Hat's cloud software portfolio.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.2 is virtualization software that has been released by the company, and this supports the latest Intel and AMD processors, and lets virtual machine images be moved between storage domains with no service disruptions. Enhancements are also made available within storage management, network management and power management.

Cormier of Red Hat said: "We think this makes us pretty competitive with [VMware's] vSphere." (CY) Link