Red Hat, Inc, the provider of open source solutions and Ericsson share a common belief in the power of open source to transform the ICT (information and communications technology) market.
They announced a broad alliance to leverage fully open source and production-ready communications solutions, spanning OpenStack, Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV), software-defined networking (SDN) and software-defined infrastructure (SDI). Ericsson and Red Hat are working together to enable customers to embrace the opportunity presented by the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, and other next-generation communications solutions with modern and agile solutions.
Ericsson is a provider of hardware, software and services for the service provider industry and is an industry acknowledged leader in NFV. In support the company has announced several high profile NFV contracts spanning applications, infrastructure and management and orchestration.
Red Hat leads the technology industry in offering solutions that are open, scalable, flexible and more secure. It is a leader in OpenStack, which has become a go-to platform for telco and enterprise cloud deployments thanks to its scalability and ability to meet real-time application needs without requiring massive increases in physical infrastructure.
The companies have long worked together to bring Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat JBoss Middleware to Ericsson customers.
The companies are expanding the collaboration to focus on OpenStack, NFV infrastructure (NFVi), SDN, SDI and containers and help define the next generation of modern technology for the communications industry, including:
- Upstream collaboration: The companies are taking an “upstream first” approach to collaboration across open source projects and communities – including OpenStack, OPNFV, and OpenDaylight – to address customer concerns about lock-in resulting from proprietary forks, differentiating the partnership from other providers. Engineering teams from both companies will collaborate to address customer requirements in upstream open source projects, helping accelerate technology innovation for scalable cloud deployments.
- Solution certification and new joint offerings: Red Hat and Ericsson are collaborating on hardware and software roadmaps and a broad certification program, aimed at developing new joint offerings for NFV, SDN and SDI. Through the collaboration, the companies plan to work together to certify Ericsson’s platform and portfolio of solutions including Ericsson Cloud Execution Environment, Ericsson Cloud SDN solution, and Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000 and Ericsson Virtual Network Functions (VNF) applications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenStack Platform, and backed by reference architectures and labs.
- Ericsson is expanding: Ericsson’s telco NFV solution to also include Red Hat OpenStack Platform to meet the needs of service providers across the globe who require a fully open and agile infrastructure. For their joint NFV, SDN and SDI solutions, the companies plan to work together to offer easy-to-deploy solutions, including automated deployment and management.
- Technical alignment to advance container innovation and adoption: Both Red Hat and Ericsson see container technologies as a major part of the platform evolution and will collaborate in upstream activities, in for example the CNCF and OCI communities.
- Backed by industry leaders: Ericsson’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based workloads, including OSS/BSS applications, virtualised network functions (VNFs), media, and more will participate in Red Hat’s certification program for applications running on Red Hat OpenStack Platform. The joint solutions will be backed by service-level agreements offered by Ericsson.
- Professional services: Customers looking to evolve their businesses in NFV, IT and datacenter modernisation can benefit from Red Hat’s consulting and training expertise in open source and emerging technology enablement, and Ericsson’s expertise in end-to-end consulting, systems integration, managed services, and support services. The combined portfolio of technologies, services, training, and certifications from Red Hat and Ericsson is designed to enable customers to transform their businesses holistically across people, process, and technology. With this joint capability, customers gain access to a global team that has the Red Hat technologies, competencies, and training that can position customers for success in today’s dynamic ICT market.
Paul Cormier, president, Products and Technologies, Red Hat said “Red Hat believes that the future of the communications industry will be defined by modern architectures and open source solutions spanning the hybrid cloud, containers, software-defined infrastructure and NFV. Ericsson shares that belief, and together we can bring the communications industry into the future with open, more secure and highly scalable solutions that enable customers to transform their businesses and deliver on the promise of IoT, 5G and more.”
Jason Hoffman, head of Product Area Cloud Infrastructure, Ericsson said “The future is open and software defined. Combining Red Hat, the world’s leading open source provider, with Ericsson, the world’s leader in NFV telecom transformation, creates customer speed and choice while enabling customers to confidently embrace open source. Our job is to enable our customers to grow faster in rapidly changing times. This alliance drives exactly this.”
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