Red Hat, Code for America Bring Cloud to Local Governments

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) is working with non-profit organization Code for America to make the OpenShift PaaS available to the organization’s partner communities free of charge to accelerate the growth of cloud at the local government level. For Code for America, this means furthering collaboration between city halls and city residents. For Red Hat, this could mean an uptick in municipal government adoption of open source cloud solutions.

Using OpenShift, Code for America and Red Hat will enable local governments to build, test, deploy and manage their cloud applications. According to Red Hat, the pairing of OpenShift’s rapid deployment capabilities and applications developed by Code for America partners will help to drive cloud adoption forward within U.S. cities. One of the key benefits is in taking the management of servers off the shoulders of city governments’ IT departments and allowing them to focus on writing code for the applications that will serve them and the residents of the city.

“OpenShift offers an application platform in the cloud that manages the stack so that developers can focus on their application code. As PaaS becomes an increasingly important component in the adoption of cloud across industries and geographies, it will become more crucial for government agencies to be ahead of the curve,” said Ashesh Badani, Red Hat’s global leader for cloud and OpenShift, in a prepared statement.

Through the partnership with Red Hat, Code for America is able to offer its member communities OpenShift free of charge for one year. Its partner cities will also receive an option for an additional year of free hosting and services.

“Cities are changing. Across the country, we are seeing local governments begin to leverage the phenomenal advances in modern technology to be more responsive and connected to their residents. Through this partnership with Red Hat, the Code for America Fellows will be equipped to collaborate with our cities and counties and do even more, creating sustainable, innovative civic technology,” said Mick Thompson, engineer in residence at Code for America, in a prepared statement.