Red Hat and Amazon: Time to Certify Cloud Partners

Red Hat has launched a cloud partner and certification program, and Amazon is the first to join. The VAR Guy is hardly surprised. This is a sign of things to come from Red Hat — and another indication of Amazon Web Services’ growing influence over next-generation solutions providers. What’s in store for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss open source partners? Here’s the scoop, from The VAR Guy.

First, the official news. Red Hat’s Premier Cloud Provider Certification and Partner Program are “designed to simplify and expand the adoption of cloud computing by enterprise customers.” According to a press release from Red Hat:

Also of note, Red Hat says:

Red Hat will further describe its cloud strategy during the company’s Open Source Cloud Computing Forum (July 22) and Red Hat Summit (Sept 1-4, Chicago).

Here Comes Amazon

No doubt, Red Hat is serious about partnering with multiple cloud providers. But Amazon.com is emerging as the central star in the cloud universe. Just about every major ISV (independent software vendor), operating system provider and hardware provider has been striving to get cozy with Amazon Web Services, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).

Many of next-generation solutions providers — from Levementum to OpenBI — have been designing open source applications that live in Amazon’s cloud. The VAR Guy isn’t suggesting that all solutions providers will shift their efforts from on-premise to the cloud. But first movers seem to be flocking toward Amazon. And in many cases, the first-mover strategy involves open source options.

Open Source Channel Alliance

Next up, The VAR Guy is curious to see if Red Hat connects the dots between Linux, JBoss middleware, the Open Source Channel Alliance (OSCA) and the cloud partner program. Nearly a dozen ISVs have joined the OSCA, an effort by Red Hat and Synnex to train nearly 15,000 Synnex resellers on open source applications.

It makes perfect sense for the OSCA members to start certifying their applications for cloud deployment. At least, that’s The VAR Guy’s spin on the situation.

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