Red Hat Brings Cloud-Native Capabilities to Software Partner Ecosystem with Kubernetes Operators

Kubernetes Operators to help software companies more easily deliver Red Hat OpenShift-tested and validated cloud-native applications and services across hybrid and multicloud footprints

SAN FRANCISCO - RED HAT SUMMIT 2018 -

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today introduced Kubernetes Operators to the Red Hat OpenShift ecosystem, providing a simplified path for software partners to ultimately deliver tested and validated Kubernetes applications on the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform. Developed with the Operator Framework open source toolkit, an Operator helps to remove the barriers to building complex, stateful applications for Kubernetes, resulting in services designed to “just work” across any cloud where Kubernetes runs.

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Red Hat intends to use our vast technical expertise in Kubernetes and cloud-native application and service development to help our software partner ecosystem and customers build their own specific Kubernetes Operators which can then be readily deployed and supported at-scale on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.

Ashesh Badani

vice president and general manager, OpenShift, Red Hat

Operators on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform launches with broad industry support. At launch, more than 60 software partners have committed support for the Kubernetes Operator Framework initiative introduced by Red Hat.

For software companies, building and maintaining cloud-native applications today is not a simple task - they must address significant complexities during the initial build and provide maintenance across siloed cloud footprints. Helping to address these challenges are Operators, a method of packaging, deploying and managing a Kubernetes application. A Kubernetes application is an application that is both deployed on Kubernetes and managed using the Kubernetes APIs and kubectl tooling. Kubernetes Operators simplify application development for Kubernetes platforms by abstracting away complexities and coding human operational knowledge into applications, creating services that can function without human intervention.

This service automation can improve the lives of both developers and operations teams, enabling Kubernetes applications to function like cloud services, from self-healing and self-provisioning capabilities to easier management and maintenance at production-scale. Built from the Operator Framework, applications can be instantly updated across all footprints simultaneously, limiting IT downtime and easing the burden of maintaining large clusters of Kubernetes applications.

Kubernetes Operators and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform provides a common foundation for cloud-native operations, pacing the needs of modern enterprise IT just as Red Hat Enterprise Linux did for traditional datacenter operations. Red Hat OpenShift pairs the innovation of Kubernetes with Red Hat’s expertise in delivering enhanced IT security and enterprise-grade support, resulting in a comprehensive, industry-leading Kubernetes platform to meet modern enterprise needs that is backed by a robust software partner ecosystem.

Red Hat is working on a future enhancement that will enable software partners to test and validate their Operators for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform against Red Hat OpenShift. This will help to provide assurances that the application is part of Red Hat’s expansive and supported ecosystem, and gives software companies the knowledge that their application will work as intended on any Red Hat OpenShift instance. This will hold true across hybrid and multicloud footprints, such as Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and more. Customers will gain more confidence in production-grade, cloud-native applications, while Red Hat software partners will gain a more manageable, easily-maintained offering that lives where their end users need it.

The Red Hat ecosystem advantage
Red Hat has a long history of building successful, collaborative software ecosystems based upon open source infrastructure, highlighted by the robust partner networks surrounding Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenStack Platform. Eventually, Red Hat plans to extend
Red Hat Container Certification with support for Operators as tested and validated Kubernetes applications on Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat is already able to provide the world’s largest commercially supported ecosystem for cloud-native applications, with the intent for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform to become the most easily-managed application platform across the hybrid cloud.

At launch, the software providers that have committed support for Red Hat’s Kubernetes Operators initiative are highlighted by Black Duck Software, Couchbase, CrunchyData, and Dynatrace, each of which will demonstrate their work with Operators on-stage at Red Hat Summit 2018. Other partners committing support include but are not limited to:

6Fusion; Aporeto; Aqua Security; Avi Networks; Avocado Systems; Banzai Cloud; BOLT; CA Technologies; Catalogic; Cockroach Labs; CollabNet; CoScale; CyberArk; Datadog; DeployHub; DSApps; Entando; EXFO; F5; FinTECHeando; Guardicore; Hazelcast; Hedvig; HTBase; Infinidat; InfluxData; Instana; InterSystems; Kaazing; Layered Insight; LINBIT; Lucep; Mist.io; Nagios; nearForm; NetApp; NetScout; NeuVector; New Relic; NuoDB; OpenIAM; Outcold Solutions; Portworx; PrimeKey; ProphetStor; Pure Storage; Redis Labs; Rocket.Chat; ScaleOut Software; SL Corporation; Snapt; SolutionSoft; Sonatype; Sysdig; Tremolo Security; Turbonomic; Twistlock; Univa; Virtuozzo; Waldur; XebiaLabs; YumaWorks; and Zabbix.

Availability
Kubernetes Operators for Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform are initially available for Red Hat software partners as part of a new Kubernetes Operator Early Access Program.

Press Conference
Red Hat executives, including Paul Cormier, the company’s president of Products and Technologies, will host a webcast live from Red Hat Summit to discuss this and today's other announcements at 2 p.m. ET. Following remarks, press and analysts are invited to participate in a question and answer session.

To join the webcast or view the replay after the event, visit: https://onlinexperiences.com/Launch/QReg/ShowKey=51468

Supporting Quotes
Ashesh Badani, vice president and general manager, OpenShift, Red Hat
“The introduction of Operator Framework, paired with Red Hat’s comprehensive Kubernetes platform, is designed to make the underlying footprint of enterprise IT consistent: Kubernetes Operators enable the creation of applications that simply work across the common fabric of Kubernetes, no matter where the deployment actually lives. Red Hat intends to use our vast technical expertise in Kubernetes and cloud-native application and service development to help our software partner ecosystem and customers build their own specific Kubernetes Operators which can then be readily deployed and supported at-scale on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.”

Ali Siddiqui, general manager, Agile Operations, CA Technologies
“CA has been a long-term partner of Red Hat and we are thrilled to see the software vendor ecosystem rally in support of helping to build an easily-managed application platform for the hybrid cloud. Our monitoring solutions complement Red Hat OpenShift platform by delivering insights into application performance to help customers build better apps faster. We are excited to be a part of the Red Hat Operator Early Access Program and look forward to working with Red Hat to build the future of cloud-native applications for our customers.”

Phil de la Motte, senior director, Business Development, Cloud Alliances, F5
“Certifying
BIG-IP solutions with Red Hat OpenShift, Ansible, and OpenStack has driven significant value for our joint customers. Red Hat and F5 collaborate to build well-tested and optimized solutions for delivery of applications and services in multiple cloud environments. We are excited to participate in Kubernetes Operators to further enable organizations to deploy, manage, and configure their clouds autonomously. These are exciting times and F5 is proud to be part of this innovative breakthrough."

Luca Ravazzolo, product manager, InterSystems
“Building stateful applications with containers and adding the complexity of smart schedulers and orchestrators like Kubernetes can be tough. Data durability is probably the most difficult issue to tackle as it covers a variety of important data areas that must all be robust, provide impeccable resiliency and be consistently repeatable. Red Hat is addressing the maintenance need in the cloud with application-specific controllers designed to extend the Kubernetes API to launch, manage and tweak composite, stateful applications like those built on the IRIS Data Platform from InterSystems.”

Garrett Mueller, senior technical director, Open Ecosystem, NetApp
“Kubernetes Operators enable the creation of intelligent applications that simply work across the common fabric of the cloud, no matter where the deployment of the Kubernetes cluster actually lives. As the data authority for hybrid cloud, NetApp has been collaborating with Red Hat to build well-tested and certified products for over a decade resulting in enterprise-class supportability for customers. We look forward to continue working with Red Hat to build intelligent and self-managing applications across all public and private clouds."

Vikram Saksena, office of the CTO, NETSCOUT
“Kubernetes Operators enable the creation of intelligent applications that simply work across the common fabric of the cloud, no matter where the deployment of the Kubernetes cluster actually lives. NETSCOUT has collaborated with Red Hat to deliver certified service assurance solutions resulting in enterprise-class supportability for our customers. As customers continue to scale their cloud deployments with complete visibility into application performance, automating the entire life-cycle management process becomes very critical. We look forward to continuing our work with Red Hat to deliver intelligent and fully-automated service assurance solutions across all the public and private clouds."

Manish Gupta, chief marketing officer, Redis Labs
“With the accelerating pace of innovation and the agility delivered by cloud computing, enterprises are adopting a new generation of tools, processes, and platforms to enhance overall efficiency. As a result, we’re seeing the emergence of an open hybrid cloud ecosystem based on a multitude of technologies coming together on Kubernetes. Red Hat and Redis Labs have collaborated on a well-tested and certified solution to bring organizations a powerful new way to deploy and operate Redis Enterprise database on the OpenShift platform. This integrated solution helps our joint customers accelerate the build, deployment, and management of cloud-native applications and rapidly deliver new experiences to their customers.”

John Leon, vice president, Business Development and Strategic Alliances, Twistlock
"Kubernetes Operators help fill a largely unmet need for users - how to run complex, stateful apps on the same fabric as apps that were born cloud native. This helps realize the vision of Kubernetes being an abstraction over all clouds for any workload and really makes it the 'operating system' for modern apps. Many of Twistlock and Red Hat's customers are in large enterprises across government, health care, and financial services and Operators will enable them to move even more of their workloads on to a fully cloud native stack running on OpenShift and protected with Twistlock."

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