Red Hat sticks its head in the clouds

Vendor launches Premier Cloud Provider Certification and Partner Programme to meet growing demand from customers and ISVs

Open-source vendor Red Hat has unveiled its Premier Cloud Provider Certification and Partner Programme in a bid to simplify and drive the adoption of cloud computing among enterprises.

Partners that join the programme will work with Red Hat on technical support, security updates, hardware certification, sales and marketing, and business models.

Red Hat said the programme had been launched to address the increased interest in cloud computing from its customers, both in building virtualised infrastructure systems and extending applications into the clouds.

In addition, the vendor claims to have seen increased interest from ISVs in providing cloud offerings based on their applications certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and/or JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

As a result, Red Hat aims to work with its ISVs in enabling them to deliver cloud offerings with a programme that covers technology, business and support models.

Mike Evans, vice president for corporate development at Red Hat, said: “A robust ecosystem of solutions providers is emerging around cloud computing. We believe Red Hat's consistent dedication to open source and open standards will further the success of a strong cloud ecosystem.

“By bringing together thousands of Red Hat-certified applications, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualisation we aim to deliver the next generation of computing architectures, today.”

Red Hat has also announced Amazon Web Services as the first member of the Premier Cloud Provider Programme.

Terry Wise, director of partner relations for Amazon Web Services, said: “As the demand for cloud based technology infrastructure services rapidly expands throughout larger enterprises, we are expecting that our expanded Red Hat relationship will help more customers take advantage of the scalable, reliable and on-demand resources provided by Amazon Web Services.”