Red Hat Extends Cloud Offerings For Amazon Web Services

Red Hat announced several actions Wednesday intended to further its approach toward open and interoperable cloud computing.

The company expanded its cloud offerings for Amazon Web Services and also said its Deltacloud API, which will support major cloud service providers, has been designated as a top level project by the Apache Software Foundation, meaning it is a full open-source project.

In addition, Red Hat said that Swiss telecommunications provider Swisscom IT Services has become a certified Red Hat cloud provider partner.

Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager of Red Hat's Cloud Business Unit, outlined Red Hat’s announcements in a Webcast.

He said Red Hat is extending its cloud platform, called Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid, to Amazon Web Services via Red Hat Cloud Access. Red Hat Cloud Access enables customers to move their subscriptions between traditional on-premise servers and off-premise clouds hosted by service providers such as Amazon Web Services.

The changes are expected to results in improved deployment portability, easier subscription management and cost advantages for deploying in the cloud.

Red Hat first extended its Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions into the cloud with Red Hat Cloud Access in 2010.

"Red Hat Cloud Access allows our customers to benefit from the valuable support they receive directly from Red Hat experts through their Red Hat subscription, while also allowing them to take advantage of the benefits of deploying in a certified public cloud," Crenshaw said. "This level of flexibility gives enterprises the ability to bring their infrastructure to the cloud more easily and now encompasses both our Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system and Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid technologies, offering more choice for public clouds."

The “graduation” of the Deltacloud to a top level project by Apache is considered a significant step in its development. Red Hat started the Deltacloud project in 2009 and turned it over to the Apache Software Foundation in 2010.

Deltacloud uses a Web service API for interacting with cloud service providers. In addition, it uses a number of API implementations for cloud providers, such as Amazon, Eucalyptus, GoGrid, IBM, Microsoft, OpenStack, and Rackspace.

"We are thrilled to have the project's growth and maturity recognized by The Apache Software Foundation," said David Lutterkort, chair of the Apache Deltacloud Project Management Committee and Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat, in a statement. "Deltacloud has shown the value of vendor-neutral cloud management API's, and we are excited that, as an Apache Top-Level Project, we will continue to provide choice to cloud users; graduation is a great milestone for our community."

Red Hat also said Swisscom IT Services has become a Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider partner. Swisscom IT Services will offer Red Hat Enterprise Linux by the hour or year for virtual machine consumption on its IaaS cloud.

“The collaboration between Swisscom and Red Hat offers enterprise clients access to flexible pay-per-use services that are in demand for today’s cloud deployments,” Crenshaw said. “Joining our ecosystem as a Certified Cloud Provider means that Swisscom has met our rigorous testing and certification requirements to deliver our customers solid technology and consistency in the cloud. This is another step forward in Red Hat helping to enable enterprises with open cloud technologies.”