Red Hat expands OpenShift Partner Ecosystem

Red Hat, Inc. has announced significant momentum within the OpenShift by Red Hat Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) Partner Programme. Since launching OpenShift in May 2011, Red Hat has partnered with cloud industry leaders - including both independent software vendors (ISVs) and system integrators (SIs) via the OpenShift Partner Programme, offering customers a broad ecosystem of partners that offer a selection of solutions that are complementary to OpenShift. Today, Red Hat announced the expansion of its OpenShift partner ecosystem, with several new partners to help deliver on its vision to deliver even more choice to developers across public, private and hybrid cloud deployments.

A recognised leader in the open source PaaS space, Red Hat offers the industry’s only full suite of open source PaaS solutions: OpenShift Origin, the open source PaaS project; OpenShift Online, a commercial public PaaS offering; and OpenShift Enterprise, an on-premise private PaaS product. OpenShift offers developers a cloud application platform with a choice of programming languages, frameworks and application lifecycle tools to build and run their applications. The platform provides built-in support for Node.js, Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, and Java and the capability for developers to add their own. OpenShift also supports many popular frameworks, including Java EE, Spring, Play and Rails.

With the announcement, Red Hat’s OpenShift Partner Programme includes several new ecosystem partners, including:
· AppDynamics - a next-generation application performance management (APM) company that simplifies the management of complex web applications, including applications based on Red Hat JBoss Middleware offerings running on OpenShift. Additionally, AppDynamics enables customers that are using both OpenShift Online and OpenShift Enterprise to manage the performance of their applications from one location.
· Continuent - a leading provider of database-as-a-service (DBaaS) solutions for MySQL and Oracle enables OpenShift Enterprise customers to take advantage of advanced clustering and database replication for their mission critical applications in an easy-to-deploy and manage integration via OpenShift cartridges.
· Kinvey - a leading Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform for enterprise applications is helping to bring OpenShift’s mobile customers closer to their back-end data by offering various data connectors to vital enterprise business systems. Morgan Bickle, CTO of Kinvey said, “OpenShift shares our vision for making mobile app development attainable by the enterprise through radically simple integrations. Together, Kinvey and Red Hat give OpenShift customers the additional capability to implement their mobile strategy with simple-to-use cartridges that mobilise data that lives in business-critical systems like salesforce.com.”
· Netsource Partners - a software engineering firm with decades of experience developing large-scale online and operational systems for both Fortune 500, mid-sized companies, and academic institutions, NetSource has used OpenShift to improve rapid development. “Since we started using Openshift, we’ve found that design, development, deployment, and support of web-based applications has been greatly simplified and accelerated,” said Andy Lim, managing partner, Netsource Partners. “We now build web-based services for both clients and our own offerings in a fraction of the time it takes to build the same services on traditional hardware/software or infrastructure-as-as-service (IaaS) platforms.”
· Phase2 – a leading digital content strategy, design and technology firm serving many of the world’s most influential organisations by providing strategic consulting, development, and design services. Using OpenShift Online’s commercial offering - known as the Silver tier - Phase2 is already delivering value for clients. “Phase2 used OpenShift Silver to set up a first-class continuous integration environment for Drupal by utilising Jenkins for continuous integration, PHP and Ruby for our build process, and even to run the client's Java-based suite of acceptance tests,” said Joe Caccavano, vice president, Business Development, Phase2. “Thanks to OpenShift's wide array of supported technologies and excellent Red Hat support, our client has been able to add continuous integration and automated testing to their project in a secure PaaS environment with support from Red Hat engineers. It's an incredible value.”
· StrongLoop – With streamlined integration via the StrongLoop Suite cartridge, OpenShift customers can take advantage of StrongLoop’s API tier for connecting enterprise data to devices and browsers, including an open, mobile, BaaS, API development framework, operational console, and certified distribution of Node.js with supported modules with very little effort.
· Vizuri - a software design, development and consulting company with a diverse client base in both the private and public sectors that is working with customers to modernise their traditional applications to take advantage of OpenShift. Joe Dickman, senior vice president, Vizuri, said, “Vizuri understood early the impact that OpenShift would have on the industry, which drove us to develop expertise early and become the first consulting organisation accredited for OpenShift in North America. Using our skills and knowledge in cloud deployments, Red Hat JBoss Middleware and other Red Hat technologies, we’ve developed core services around OpenShift focused on educating customers and enabling broad adoption.”
· Pat V. Mack - a leading IT consulting services; offering clients a full range of engineering and business solutions, including business process management, project management, engineering architecture, design, development, integration, and support of mission-essential products. OpenShift’s security capabilities from built-in technologies such as SELinux, combined with Pat V. Mack’s deep understanding of Department of Defense (DoD) security requirements and protocol, together the companies are able to deliver combined value for public sector customers. According to Sidney Metzmaker, director of operations, Pat V. Mack, "By working with Red Hat, we are significantly reducing the barrier of entry into the DoD application marketplace - namely esoteric and complex Information Assurance (IA) governance, DoD-unique APIs/GOTS infrastructure products, and the inability to create representative software operating environments in order to conduct realistic testing. With OpenShift, we can address these requirements, reducing the time to deliver applications for the DoD.”

“Whether it’s an expansive portfolio of complementary technologies or a rich network of partners to help end-users reap the benefits of cloud, customers want choice,” said Julio Tapia, director, OpenShift ecosystem, Red Hat. “With the OpenShift Partner Programme, Red Hat continues to build upon our goal to bring developers and customers the industry’s broadest ecosystem to meet their evolving needs. Today’s announcement highlights the breadth and depth of partners OpenShift is attracting, and the joint value we can deliver to customers.”