Using OpenStack’s Summit in Hong Kong this month, Red Hat, Inc. has announced multiple new innovations designed to support Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud vision for the future. This includes the availability of a beta version of Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 4.0 (ELOP), advancements to drive OpenShift and a preview of OpenStack-M. OpenStack-M is an open source deployment and management solution for OpenStack-powered clouds that will eventually be integrated into the Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.

They also announced the next release of Red Hat CloudForms 3.0, RH’s cloud management platform. CloudForms adds enterprise-grade cloud management tools to ELOP4.0 which adds additional capabilities useful with a number of different infrastructure platforms.

Gartner has already come out in favor of greater OpenStack use in its “2014 Planning Guide for Private Cloud, Data Center Modernization and Desktop Transformation” report published last month. The report notes that “OpenStack-based cloud management solutions are increasingly viewed by Gartner clients as a means to mitigate risk of lock-in and expand vendor choice in private and hybrid cloud deployments,”.

All of this is in support of Red Hat’s collaborative effort with Intel entitled “On-Ramp to Enterprise OpenStack” that they mutually announced just days before the summit in Hong Kong.

Speaking about the initiative Rad Hat’s General Manager, Virtualization states, “Red Hat’s longstanding relationship with Intel has played a key role in the adoption of Linux as the strong enterprise platform we see today. Like Linux in its early days, collaboration among technology industry leaders can help foster enterprise adoption of OpenStack. As Red Hat’s OpenStack vision and solutions gain momentum, On-Ramp to Enterprise OpenStack represents the next level of our collaboration with Intel, and I am excited about the opportunity we mutually face to help demystify OpenStack and show enterprise organizations its true potential.”

For many organizations that want to build either hybrid or private clouds using platforms that have been evolving out of the open source movement for years this is good news. These platforms offer lower costs of entry and greater levels of customization than more turn-key or off-the-shelf options. Add to that the fact that a number of development resources exist to aid in planning, development and deployment of these sophisticated resources.

Many offshore development teams have years of both Red Hat and OpenStack experience offering companies lower cost options for designing, deploying and maintaining their cloud. In most cases these teams not only can aid in developing the necessary components but often can aid in migrating existing systems and applications to the new environment.

Either way Red Hat is continuing to be a force in the advancements made in both traditional enterprise computing and in the deployment of cloud-based services.

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