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Organisations in Australia and New Zealand are facing increasingly complex cloud environments as they seek to modernise their IT, and discover and exploit new opportunities for business growth. However, many are trying to avoid the constraints of cloud vendor lock-in and instead adopting an open hybrid cloud strategy.
Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source enterprise software solutions, is ideally placed to meet their needs. It uses a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies that help users standardise across environments, develop cloud-native applications, and integrate, automate, secure and manage complex environments.
To enable organisations to maximise the benefits of Red Hat solutions in their hybrid cloud strategies, Red Hat has created its Certified Cloud Service Provider (CCSP) partner program. CCSP partners are able to offer and support the full range of Red Hat solutions and services.
Red Hat has appointed Tech Data as CCSP distributor to qualify, recruit, onboard and support CCSP partners. This article looks at the drivers of demand for the services CCSP partners offer, the role of Tech Data in selecting and supporting CCSP partners. It provides an overview of typical partner organisations, and how they can support their customers with the full range of Red Hat services.
Why the market needs CCSP partners
Hybrid cloud enables organisations to provide compliant solutions, support IT modernisation and uncover new business growth opportunities without vendor lock-in. It provides the flexibility and scalability customers require to meet their evolving needs.
IDC has identified hybrid cloud to be a key imperative for Australian enterprises’ infrastructure transformation in 2021. IDC says it is “vital that technology vendors…support this long-term trend by assisting enterprises’ transition to a hybrid cloud environment with technology, services and a skilled channel.”
In New Zealand, IDC says adoption of multi or hybrid cloud strategies is “leading organisations to rely increasingly on managed cloud services providers to manage more complex environments and access new business services to deliver business outcomes."
Garry Gray, director of partners and alliances, Red Hat A/NZ said cloud provider models had expanded beyond simple, multi-tenant public clouds to include multi-hybrid cloud build-outs, Linux container-based infrastructure and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions. “Customers want to optimise their workloads in the best possible environment. And Partners are at the heart of Red Hat’s ecosystem, underpinning our vision to build and deploy the best applications possible and develop greater customer relationships," he said.
"Red Hat is continuously investing in its channel to ensure partners receive the highest level of training, enablement, service excellence, robust benefits, and the ability to deliver flexible Red Hat subscriptions and technologies aligned with changing customer needs. The Red Hat CCSP program gives partners the ability to expand the trusted cloud services they provide to customers".
Red Hat solutions enable organisations to build secure, scalable platforms that embrace both public and private cloud and empower DevOps to develop, deploy and manage diverse applications seamlessly.
CCSP partners gain access to the full range of Red Hat solutions and technologies, enabling them to expand their hybrid cloud service offerings and support scalable, highly available third-party ISV applications on Red Hat technologies.
Tech Data’s role as CCSP distributor
Tech Data was appointed a distributor for Australia and New Zealand for the Red Hat CCSP program in March 2020 to help Red Hat meet growing customer demand for managed, multi-hybrid cloud solutions.
The company works with Red Hat to qualify, recruit and onboard the right CCSP partners, validating them for their ability to host and resell Red Hat’s portfolio of solutions through a monthly, pay-as-you go consumption model that supports multi-tenant, dedicated, hybrid and managed-service delivery models.
Tech Data is also able to offer CCSP partners other services that complement and enhance their Red Hat services. These include:
- access to a wider ecosystem of complimentary vendors that includes AWS, Azure, Cloudera, Diamanti, Hybrid Cloud, NVIDIA and Thales,
- access to the Tech Data Centre of Excellence,
- access to skilled pre-sales support; and
- access to Tech Data StreamOne billing platform that enables them to scale, launch and manage a broad range of cloud services, and handle provisioning, billing and end-user lifecycle management.
What it takes to be a Red Hat CCSP partner
One of the primary goals of the CCSP program is to maintain a consistent level of service to customers that use Red Hat products in their data centre and that want to use them in a cloud or managed service.
To this end CCSP partners are required to meet training and support levels specified by Red Hat, and to offer a highly available and scalable infrastructure for hosting Red Hat-certified images and that ensures Red Hat image accessibility, persistence, and security.
What organisations become Red Hat CCSP partners?
Red Hat CCSP partners come from a broad range of IT organisations. They include: cloud, hosting and managed service providers, systems integrators and independent software vendors.
CCSP partners gain access to Red Hat solutions that enable them to offer a highly secure, scalable platform for building public and private clouds, and empower DevOps to develop, deploy, and manage diverse applications seamlessly.
Mr. Gray says the Red Hat CCSP program enables partners to build new cloud and managed service revenue streams using the technologies their customers demand.
“This global program offers the flexibility, support and access partners need to deliver services quickly and effectively with their organisation’s existing processes. A CCSP program partnership with Red Hat will help partners who want to cultivate long-term relationships with existing customers, and build opportunities in newer markets. Importantly the program provides a partner with the ability to offer ‘pay-as-you-go’ (hourly, monthly and yearly) consumption payment models for their customers, whereby they only pay for what they consume.”
CCSP partners’ customers can use those solutions to improve operational efficiency and flexibility, expand their hybrid cloud service offerings, and offer scalable and highly available third-party applications on Red Hat technologies.
Mr. Gray says customers can choose from hundreds of certified CCSP partners. “They include many featured in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service, that can deliver secure, scalable, supported and consistent environments for enterprise cloud deployments using our open source technology.
“Customers benefit from flexible pricing and deployment models, the tools to support them, and gain access to the latest enterprise open source technologies and innovations without security or stability risks.”
Red Hat services offered through CCSP partners
Red Hat CCSP partners have access to the full range of Red Hat services, to resell to end customers, create new offerings to the market and build/optimise their own infrastructure.
About Tech Data
From the smart phone in a user’s hand to complex solutions powering a global enterprise, Tech Data is connecting the world with the power of technology. Our end-to-end portfolio of products, services and solutions, highly specialised skills and expertise in next-generation technologies enable channel partners to bring to market the products and solutions the world needs to connect, grow and advance.
As the world’s leading end-to-end technology distributor, we put singular focus on our customers’ needs and goals with the objectivity of a true strategic partner. With reach, capabilities and resources that span the technology continuum, we are a vital link in the IT channel, delivering the insights and optimized solutions our channel partners depend on to compete in the market today, tomorrow and into the future.
Tech Data is ranked No. 90 on the Fortune 500® and has been named one of Fortune’s “World’s Most Admired Companies” for 11 straight years.
In summary
Demand for hybrid cloud services is growing rapidly in Australia and New Zealand as organisations seek to modernise their IT and discover and exploit new opportunities for business growth. Increasingly they are turning to open source solutions to avoid vendor lock-in.
A recent Red Hat survey found 92 percent of IT leaders in Asia Pacific using open source software. In response to this demand Red Hat’s CCSP program is growing rapidly in the Asia Pacific region. There are now more than 100 partners: managed service providers, cloud providers and systems integrators.
To better serve these and future CCSP partners Red Hat has appointed Tech Data as a CCSP distributor. Tech Data is able to assess, onboard and serve CCSP partners with the full range of Red Hat technologies, and provide a range of innovative Tech Data services that complement these.
Find out what you could gain by becoming a Red Hat CCSP partner, and join our upcoming CCSP webinar.
