Red Hat Summit 2024: The 10 Coolest Solution Providers

Capgemini, Miracle Software Systems and Presidio were among the standout solution providers at Red Hat Summit 2024.

One of the central messages throughout Red Hat’s Summit 2024 event was that the open source enterprise tools vendor sees solution providers as integral in meeting customer demand in multiple technology opportunities, including artificial intelligence and virtualization.

During the event, held in Denver this year, the Raleigh, N.C.-based IBM subsidiary included some of its top solution provider partners in presentations on the power of its products in modernizing applications and putting into action AI and generative AI (GenAI), among other use cases. And solution providers occupied a noticeable footprint in the exhibit hall.

“It's an incredible opportunity as a (Red Hat) services partner right now,” Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks told CRN in an interview. “And I don't say that only because I started my career in services. But when I look at the fundamentals of what we've released with InstructLab and RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) AI is the ability to change a small model to solve a customer problem. I think services partners will be the ones that can train on that the fastest. They'll be the ones that understand customers that can pick the best use cases to prove that the technology and that AI in general works for customers.”

[RELATED: Red Hat CEO Hicks: Open Source ‘At The Center’ Of AI Innovation]

Red Hat Summit 2024

Stefanie Chiras, channel chief and senior vice president of partner ecosystem success at Red Hat, told CRN in an interview that InstructLab provides services partners “a simple way … to come in and bring their expertise into instruction to more prompt-tune the model in a very easy way.”

Partners don’t need data science expertise to enter prompts that create the synthetic data to tailor models for customers in an efficient, cost effective and energy efficient way to deliver customers custom-tailors models.

“That is a huge opportunity for these services partners,” Chiras said.

About 80 percent of Red Hat’s overall sales come through indirect channel and alliance relationships, according to CRN’s 2024 Channel Chiefs.

CRN scoured Summit’s exhibit floor for some of the most notable Red Hat work put on by solution providers.

Among the solution providers to catch our attention are:

• Capgemini
• Miracle Software Systems
• Presidio

Read on for more on the work solution providers are doing with Red Hat.

Deloitte

During Red Hat Summit 2024, the vendor and Deloitte revealed a deeper collaboration with the goal of a comprehensive offering to support software-defined vehicle (SDV) product lines.

The London-based consulting giant has teamed up with Red Hat on a pre-integrated, multi-vendor solution for SDVs based on Red Hat In-Vehicle Operating System (OS). The service leverages Red Hat OpenShift, Ansible Automation Platform and Quay from the vendor and Deloitte’s portfolio of systems engineering, operational services, validation and verification, virtualization and more, according to Deloitte.

“We’re making significant strides towards revolutionizing the software-defined future of the automotive industry,” Olivier May, Deloitte Consulting’s global chief commercial officer for the IBM alliance and principal, said in a statement. “The remarkable growth of software-defined vehicles necessitates a shift in approach; currently, updates in software have led to varying software versions in vehicles, intensifying integration dynamics and capability challenges. Together with Red Hat, we’re looking forward to helping redefine industry norms and creating new workflows to meet the demands at every stage of the automotive development process.”

Capgemini

Capgemini representatives came to Summit 2024 to present on the solution provider’s containerization service, its workload migration factory, mainframe modernization, enterprise-scale microservices framework and other offerings.

Executives with the France-based company – No. 3 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – presented on how to combine Red Hat OpenShift and automation for secure deployment of highly classified workloads and how the company uses Red Hat and IBM technologies to modernize legacy apps on mainframe systems.

Capgemini has leveraged Red Hat for countless projects, including using OpenShift Dev Spaces to help Germany’s Federal Information Technology Center (ITZBund) adopt more agile methods while following security requirements in an environment isolated from the internet.

As a result of the work, German government authorities could order container platforms and accelerate the country’s migration to digital public administration, according to Red Hat.

Carahsoft

Carahsoft has been Red Hat’s master government aggregator and distributor for more than 15 years, according to the solution provider, delivering Red Hat services to federal, state and local government agencies plus education customers.

The Reston, Va.-based company – No. 17 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – partners with Red Hat on enterprise open source software services that safeguard the sensitive data of U.S. and Canadian governments, health care organizations, academic institutions and other customers, according to Carahsoft.

Their joint work has focused on multicloud, artificial intelligence, IT modernization, machine learning, cybersecurity and development, security and operations (DevSecOps), among other technology areas, according to Carahsoft.

DXC Technology

As part of DXC Technology’s presence at Red Hat Summit 2024, the solution provider’s worldwide product manager for managed container services, Jelle Wolthuizen, presented on how to make OpenShift the default hybrid and multicloud platform for organizations.

The Ashburn, Va.-based company – No. 10 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – has partnered with Red Hat for 20-plus years, sharing more than 500 customers, including BMW Group, according to DXC. The solution provider used its DXC Robotic Drive, a managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) based on Red Hat technologies, to improve BMW machine learning and big data processing capabilities, creating and configuring the platform in three months.

DXC uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux for scaling applications across bare metal, virtual environments, containers and more, according to the solution provider. It also leverages Red Hat technology for application modernization, among other use cases.

Converge Technology Solutions

Converge Technology Solutions’ Red Hat offerings include a Unified Network Automation Platform (UNAP), powered by the vendor’s Ansible Automation Platform and listed in the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog.

This offering by the Toronto-based company – a member of CRN’s 2024 MSP 500 – promises organizations the ability to manage network infrastructure lifecycle across multi-vendor environments with one pane of glass, according to Converge.

For Summit 2024, Converge solution specialist Kaitlin Jennings presented on using observability, analytics, AI and automation to help retailers move faster and more efficiently.

SoftwareOne

SoftwareOne’s Red Hat prowess includes more than 60 sales accreditations and more than 30 sales engineers, according to the solution provider.

The Switzerland-based company – a member of CRN’s 2024 MSP 500 – boasts of expertise in Red Hat technologies including Ansible and OpenShift with a global reach for implementing Red Hat products thanks to operations in 90 countries, according to SoftwareOne.

SoftwareOne partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud aid the solution provider in helping customers adopt multi-cloud strategies and integration with Red Hat tools without vendor lock-in.

The solution provider also leverages Red Hat for IT asset management (ITAM) and software asset management (SAM) work, according to SoftwareOne.

Presidio

Red Hat on AWS (ROSA), development operations (DevOps) and cloud migration and data and analytics strategies are just some of the areas of Red Hat expertise Presidio representatives came to Summit 2024 to showcase.

The New York-based company – a member of CRN’s 2024 MSP 500 – leverages Red Hat’s operating systems, hybrid cloud, container-based platforms and more for app modernization work.

Presidio’s ROSA prowess is useful for enterprises looking to run traditional on-premises applications – SAP, Oracle databases and custom applications – in the cloud, according to the solution provider.

CDW

CDW’s Red Hat practice promises customers ways to standardize across environments, integrate complex environments and add automation.

The Vernon Hills, Ill.-based company – No. 4 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – has offerings around data center deployment, automation and management with Red Hat products plus an expertise in RHEL, Ansible, OpenShift and other Red Hat products, according to CDW.

The solution provider can also help users leave CentOS Linux for RHEL for cost savings and improved analytics, security and compliance. The CentOS Project will cease updates and releases for CentOS Linux 7 on June 30 in favor of CentOS Stream, the upstream development platform for RHEL releases, according to Red Hat.

Miracle Software Systems

Miracle Software Systems representatives were on site at Summit 2024 to showcase the services partner’s Red Hat capabilities in overcoming legacy virtualization, tiered architectures and outmoded development practices.

The Novi, Mich.-based Red Hat partner also has proficiency in Red Hat Satellite, which facilitates software deployment, configuration, patching, provisioning and monitoring for on-premises and hybrid cloud environments, according to Miracle Software.

Miracle Software’s capabilities extend into the Red Hat-developed Keycloak open-source single sign-on (SSO) product and leveraging Event-Driven Ansible and Ansible Lightspeed for AI-powered IT operations automation, according to the solution provider.

Kyndryl

No surprise that IBM spinoff Kyndryl has a close relationship with IBM subsidiary Red Hat. In fact, 80 percent of Kyndryl accounts have Red Hat technology, according to the solution provider.

Representatives with the New York-based company – No. 7 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – were on site during Summit 2024 for a variety of presentations, including how Kyndryl’s GenAI framework works with OpenShift AI and how Kyndryl uses Ansible Event Driven Automation (EDA) for its automated operational control framework.

Kyndryl has more than 4,500 consultants with Red Hat certifications and accreditations and has worked with Red Hat to help customers including Bord Gáis Energy and Carrefour Belgium, according to the solution provider.

It also operates one of the largest global implementations of Ansible Automation Platform and is an early adopter of Red Hat’s policy as code offering.