Red Hat Summit: Cloud Partners, Cloud Access and FuseSource
At this week’s Red Hat Summit, the company is making moves to boost its cloud mojo and attract channel partners with announcements regarding its Certified Cloud Provider Program, the expansion of Red Hat Cloud Access, and the acquisition of open source integration and messaging firm FuseSource.
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) noted its Certified Cloud Provider Program has doubled since its start in 2011 and now boasts certified partners in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
As Talkin’ Cloud pointed out this week, Red Hat clearly has big ambitions for the cloud, and that involves succeeding against numerous competitors. Channel partners influence more than half of Red Hat revenues — the emphasis on its cloud provider program is therefore very serious business.
In brief, Red Hat is building its Certified Cloud Provider Program to enable partners to “plan, build, manage and offer hosted cloud solutions and Red Hat technologies to customers.” Providers have to pass certification standards to offer Red Hat cloud products, and also leverage Red Hat technologies to deploy and manage secure clouds. According to Red Hat, industries represented in the certified program include manufacturing, financial services, consumer services, health care, media and entertainment, as well as the public sector.
Also, Red Hat expanded its Cloud Access offering to include JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and JBoss Enterprise Web Server. According to the release, “Cloud Access is an added benefit for Red Hat subscribers that enables them to utilize certain subscriptions on selected Red Hat Premier Certified Cloud Provider clouds.” Cloud Access gives subscribers “portability” for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid. Customers can also use Cloud Access functionality on-premise or in a public cloud.
Lastly, Red Hat announced its acquisition of FuseSource from Progress Software Corp. FuseSource is a provider of open source integration and messaging, and Red Hat plans to use the firm’s tech chops to “accelerate the delivery of application integration products and services to enterprise customers.” Red Hat expects the open source community supporting FuseSource to “play important roles in the middleware community projects” and thus enhance the JBoss portfolio.
“Application integration software is one of the fastest growing segments of the enterprise software market,” said Craig Muzilla, VP and GM of middleware at Red Hat, in a prepared statement. “With the addition of FuseSource to our middleware portfolio, we will enable customers to experience greater integration capabilities and flexibility. FuseSource’s technologies, expertise, and commitment to open source make them a great fit.”
Talkin’ Cloud readers can click here for on overview on Red Hat’s Certified Cloud Provider Program.
