Red Hat debuts OpenStack Services on OpenShift for telcos

Red Hat has announced the general availability of its Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift, representing the next major release of its Red Hat OpenStack Platform. This release aims to streamline how organisations manage their virtualisation strategies, enhancing their ability to scale, upgrade, and add resources to cloud environments.

The release is particularly significant for enterprises, especially telecommunication service providers, as it unifies traditional and cloud-native networks into a modernised network fabric. According to Red Hat, this new product offers a pathway for organisations to rethink their virtualisation approaches, addressing the increasing complexity of infrastructure management due to industry transformations.

Chris Wright, Senior Vice President of Global Engineering and Chief Technology Officer at Red Hat, emphasised the company's ongoing commitment to OpenStack. "Red Hat's dedication to OpenStack is demonstrated through our extensive contributions to the project, our leadership in the OpenStack community, and our focus on delivering enterprise-grade OpenStack solutions to our customers. This dedication must evolve as our customers' needs change, and Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift will help provide our OpenStack customers with a more unified, flexible application platform," Wright stated.

The new release is designed to help organisations manage the complexity of deployment for both virtualised and cloud-native applications from the core to the edge. Red Hat claims that compute nodes can be deployed four times faster than with Red Hat OpenStack Platform 17.1. Additionally, the product integrates with Ansible for accelerated time-to-market and includes a scalable OpenStack control plane capable of managing Kubernetes-native pods on Red Hat OpenShift.

Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift also promises improved cost management, enhanced security features, and AI-optimised infrastructure. The control plane benefits from Role-based Access Control and encryption mechanisms, which aim to increase security and compliance. The product's observability features are designed to offer a better understanding of hybrid cloud health through an observability user interface, cluster observability operator, and OpenShift cluster logging operator.

Takeshi Maehara, Deputy General Manager of Network and Cloud Platforms at KDDI, shared his approval: "KDDI has been a longstanding user of both Red Hat OpenStack Platform and Red Hat OpenShift, and we're excited about this next evolution. These solutions have enabled us to quickly and flexibly develop and deploy new services and applications. This integration will allow organisations like KDDI to modernise and manage complexity from the core to the edge."

Nilay Rathod, Technology Automation and Services Lead at Spark New Zealand, echoed similar sentiments: "Spark is pleased Red Hat is continuing to evolve Red Hat OpenStack Platform. Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift will help to further enhance our telecommunications infrastructure, providing even greater flexibility, scalability, and resilience. Our collaboration with Red Hat continues to drive innovation, allowing us to deliver superior performance and reliability to our customers. Together, we are building the future of New Zealand's wireless mobile networks."

Red Hat asserts that its commitment to OpenStack remains robust, emphasising that OpenStack remains a vital component for large IT infrastructures, especially in the telecommunication sector. The company provides tailored training and consulting services to help customers navigate the deployment process, offering ongoing guidance through its Technical Account Managers.

Red Hat aims to address current industry challenges while preparing organisations for future opportunities, particularly in intelligent networks leveraging AI and edge capabilities. The reliance of 94% of telecommunication companies in the Fortune 500 on Red Hat underscores the firm's established ability to support and modernise telecom networks. Red Hat OpenStack Services on OpenShift aims to enhance this capability, supporting the expansion of services, applications, and revenue streams in the evolving telecom environment.