OpenShift For Now!

Nearly 50% of the top Fortune 100 companies are using Red Hat OpenShift2. Almost 30% of the top Fortune Global 500 companies use OpenShift, representing

What is openshift?

OpenShift is a cloud development Platform as a Service (PaaS) developed by Red Hat. It is an open-source development platform, which enables developers to develop and deploy their applications on cloud infrastructure. It is very helpful in developing cloud-enabled services. The OpenShift Console has developer and administrator-oriented views. Administrator views allow one to monitor container resources and container health, manage users, work with operators, etc. Developer views are oriented around working with application resources within a namespace. OpenShift also provides a CLI that supports a superset of the actions that the Kubernetes CLI provides.

The whole and sole idea for openshift is we can manage the whole infrastructure through a single product

1. Innovate and go to market faster

Consider the case of a company specializing in the design and sale of integrated circuits. The cycle of innovation in this industry is relentless; as new technologies arise, chipmakers who can most effectively design chips for these new uses will be the ones who gain market share. For example, the rapid rise of the smartphone has been a boon to companies that have designed chips to power it.

Orchestrating container usage via the OpenShift platform provides a marked efficiency advantage to chipmakers who utilize containers for the next-generation virtualization benefits they offer. Deploying an increased number of apps on existing system resources enables a chipmaker to provide its developers with an expanded toolset to increase their ability to innovate. In an industry where a chipmaker’s main products can become outdated — if not obsolete — within a year or less, the ability to innovate and bring a product to market rapidly is a significant competitive advantage.

2. Accelerate application development

Deploying and managing containers at scale is a complicated process. OpenShift enables efficient container orchestration, allowing rapid container provisioning, deploying, scaling, and management. The tool enhances the DevOps process by streamlining and automating the container management process. Cutting down on time that would otherwise be spent managing containers improves your company’s productivity and speeds up application development.

Accelerated application development is especially valuable in enterprises where a company’s IT system must accommodate rapidly evolving functions. An example of this is the cybersecurity industry. Companies in this industry face an arms race against hackers, who are continually looking for software flaws to exploit. When an exploit is found, cybersecurity firms are expected to respond with fixes as rapidly as possible — often in days, if not hours.

3. Enterprise-grade, container-based platform with no vendor lock-in

A company’s IT needs can vary greatly from one period to the next. Selecting a proprietary container management platform subjects you to the possibility that your vendor won’t be able to provide an acceptable solution if your company’s IT focus changes. In such cases, the expense and time involved in moving from a proprietary vendor to a new platform can be considerable.

Consider the case of a company with worldwide manufacturing facilities that implements a proprietary container platform tool. If the company shifts its production approach to a process that requires it to change to a new operating system — one that isn’t supported by its containerization platform — the company will face the expensive task of redoing its containerization orchestration on another platform.

With a vendor-agnostic open-source platform, users can migrate their container processes to the new operating system quickly — while avoiding the extensive costs often involved in migrating from a proprietary operating framework.

4. Enable DevOps and department-wide collaboration

The DevOps process relies upon transparent communication between all involved parties. Containerization provides a convenient means of enabling your IT operations staff to test instances of a new app. OpenShift assists this process by making it easy to test apps throughout your IT architecture without being impeded by framework conflicts, deployment issues, or language discrepancies.

One industry that can benefit from OpenShift’s enablement of enhanced DevOps processes is the Webhosting and development field. Companies competing in this industry are constantly racing to offer their customers enhanced functionality. For instance, as web commerce increases by leaps and bounds, companies and individuals progressively look to sell their products over the web. They can do this by adding web sales functionality to their own sites via widgets designed for this purpose, or by purchasing sites with built-in sales functionality.

A company operating in this field, which requires constantly updated functionality to stay competitive, needs to empower its employees to design and test applications as rapidly and effectively as possible. By enabling developer and operations staff to collaborate efficiently, OpenShift allows web hosting and design companies to link developers and operations staff together to effectively design, test, and deploy applications.

5. Self-service provisioning

This self-service provisioning helps improve developer productivity by allowing your development team to work with the tools they are most comfortable using — speeding up the development process by enabling faster creation and deployment of applications. At the same time, OpenShift allows your operations staff to retain control over the environment as a whole.

Examples of how this feature benefits a user can be seen in companies where the development staff must be fluent in a variety of development tools and languages. For instance, a video game development company can benefit from this feature when they need to develop games that are compatible with a variety of operating systems. OpenShift enables the game developer’s programmers to use their favorite tools while developing games for different systems. This results in effective container usage, without forcing the company’s developers to use tools they aren’t familiar with.

That’s Why!!

Nearly 50% of the top Fortune 100 companies are using Red Hat OpenShift2. Almost 30% of the top Fortune Global 500 companies use OpenShift, representing:

• 2 of the top 3 energy companies
• 2 of the top 3 hotel companies
• 2 of the top 3 telecommunications companies
• 3 of the top 5 aerospace companies
• 4 of the top 5 industrial companies
• 3 of the top 10 finance companies
• 4 of the top 10 retail companies
• 5 of the top 10 healthcare companies
• 5 of the top 10 transportation companies

The industry use case for openshift :

Challenge: Improve productivity and speed to market

Cisco’s success depends on its ability to quickly deliver innovative IT products and solutions to customers. Delays can cost the company business. To encourage speed to market and improve satisfaction, Cisco needed to keep its 1,000+ developers fully engaged in designing and building applications and guard against high employee turnover, low productivity, and slow response times.

Solution: Build a 1-stop shopping catalog

Cisco turned to Red Hat to design and build its LAE, a PaaS deployment that supports hundreds of apps that power a variety of business functions. The solution gives developers a self-service portal they can use to order the IT resources they need to develop apps, eliminating manual provisioning. “It’s a 1-stop shopping catalog … making the ordering process seamless and easier for developers to use,” said Sudha Agrahara, IT manager at Cisco.

Results: Move from months to minutes for faster innovation

Cisco developers used to wait as long as 3 months for projects to be provisioned. “[Now] the developers push a button and the service is delivered within a matter of … minutes,” said Agrahara. More productivity means customers get innovative products and services faster. The solution reduces demands on limited IT resources and gives developers more time to focus on creative projects, increasing employee satisfaction. “Having a strategic, forward-thinking partner like Red Hat that aligns with all of our priorities is a key part of Cisco’s success,” said Michael White, IT architect at Cisco. “We’re thankful to have Red Hat as our partner.”