How Red Hat helps to deliver business value

According to Red Hat’s 2023 Global Tech Outlook report, innovation and security remain a crucial directive and criteria for digital transformation success.1 While many organizations need to deliver software and services faster for their customers, they still need to maintain stability and strengthen security. 

Working with Red Hat meets that need. Customers have shared with us that they partner with Red Hat because of the security and reliability, proactive support, and innovation around hybrid cloud and open source1 technology. With Red Hat, you have access to enterprise-ready, open source software and the resources you need to help you deliver solutions for your business.

What are the benefits of working with Red Hat? This document outlines what Red Hat offers, including: 

• Technology
  • Security and software supply chain security
  • Innovative product portfolio
  • Supported life cycle
• People
  • Open source leadership
  • Flexible ways to buy and use
• Process
  • Partner ecosystem
  • Support and expertise

Security and software supply chain security

We develop, curate, test, and harden community open source software to deliver enterprise-ready, certified solutions—within a proven, documented supply chain practice—for more than 30 years. And because security does not stop after deployment, we have the Red Hat® Product Security team. This team of engineers constantly analyzes threats and vulnerabilities daily against all of our products to offer advice and security patches delivered safely for use in your enterprise software.

Software supply chain attacks are a matter of when they will happen, not if. Ransomware damages can be minor compared to overall downtime and recovery costs of a data breach. You can consistently code, build, and monitor for a Trusted Software Supply Chain across any environment with Red Hat, to audit and act on vulnerabilities early with automated security guardrails at every phase of the software development life cycle.

Red Hat Insights continuously analyzes platforms and applications to predict risk, recommend actions, and track costs so enterprises can better manage hybrid cloud environments. Insights is included in most instances when you purchase Red Hat Enterprise Linux®, Red Hat OpenShift®, and Red Hat Ansible® Automation Platform.

Innovative product portfolio

Our open hybrid cloud strategy, encompassing our full product portfolio, allows you to use existing hybrid IT while setting yourself up for future advances in technology. By using Red Hat’s extensive portfolio of products and services, and working with our partners, you can can:

• Run any application or workload consistently across any footprint.
• Help developers efficiently build, deploy, and manage applications. 
• Simplify, automate, and secure processes.

Our open hybrid cloud strategy is built on the technological foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, where we extend on existing investments and processes made using Red Hat OpenShift, and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. 

Our customers can also view our product roadmaps and provide feedback to shape our product direction. Our support team also works directly with the engineers who build our products so that we can influence how the products are tested and released. We take the feedback we receive seriously, whether it comes through chat sessions, social media, or other sources. We aggregate this information, relay it to our engineers, and file bugs for customers so that we can improve our products to meet customers’ needs. With each major and minor release, we update our products to address the most common challenges.

Supported life cycle

We are committed to defining and supporting the life cycle of our products, so that security patches are released immediately and updates and releases happen on a routine, predictable schedule. With Red Hat, you are not tied to a specific version of a product, but cover the entire life cycle of the product. You can upgrade to any supported version of Red Hat software and deploy the software on physical, virtual, or cloud-based servers. You have access to all supported versions in both binary and source form, including all enterprise product documentation, security updates, and bug fixes. 

Buy the product you need for the right amount of time, whether you upgrade frequently or infrequently. Red Hat product life cycles are generally 3, 5, 7, or 10 years. You have the flexibility to adopt the version

Open source leadership

Red Hat is the leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions. Since open source is built on standards, everything Red Hat creates is built to be agnostic and compatible. We offer flexibility in that our technology is interoperable across cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, and Google, and across environments. Our interoperability means we will work with you to integrate with your current setup. You can also continue to grow with Red Hat, and alongside our ecosystem of partners.

Flexible ways to buy and use

Red Hat offers a range of flexible collaboration options to best suit your needs. Whether you prefer an annual subscription tailored to your specific product requirements, a versatile planned consumption model spanning various products and platforms (including options like hybrid committed spend), or the ability to make ad hoc purchases, we have got you covered. You can make your purchases directly through Red Hat or explore our offerings through one of the public cloud hyperscaler marketplaces.

Partner ecosystem

We know that your IT environments often include solutions from more than one vendor, and that you rely on each vendor’s complementary strengths to minimize costs, maximize efficiency, and avoid proprietary lock-in. 

That is why Red Hat works with a global ecosystem of partners to ensure that our shared customers have access to innovative, cost-effective solutions that are valuable and responsive to their business needs. Our partners run the gamut from Fortune 100 companies to independent software vendors. Red Hat’s strong partner relationships result in Red Hat products that are based on a combination of customer and partner requirements and are ready for hybrid cloud. Red Hat offers three kinds of certifications: 

• Certified hardware ensures that Red Hat solutions are running on tested, verified, and supported hardware. 
• Certified software identifies third-party software solutions tested specifically on the Red Hat platform. 
• Certified cloud providers offer trusted clouds where customers can run applications on Red Hat technologies. 

Support and expertise

Support should be more than a number to call when something goes wrong. It is a commitment to product expertise, to identifying potential issues and best practices, and helping our customers perform at their best. With Red Hat, you have access to online and phone support, so you can work with an expert or resolve issues on your own time. Red Hat has support levels to match your needs as a company. 

• Self-support: Teams have access to Red Hat Knowledgebase, a collection of solutions, articles, videos, discussions, and product documentation created by our support engineers from the customer cases they solve. 
• Standard support: Customers have unlimited access to technical support engineers during standard business hours in addition to all the documented solutions available through the Red Hat Customer Portal. Our initial response time is one business hour for severity 1 issues. 
• Premium support: Customers have unlimited 24x7 access to our global network of experienced technical support engineers in addition to all the documented solutions available through the Red Hat Customer Portal. Our initial response is one hour for severity 1 issues. 

You can open support cases in several ways—from the Red Hat Customer Portal, directly within Red Hat products with Red Hat Access, or by phone through the local support center. Once a case is opened, it is assigned to a specialized team of product-specific technical experts. If the issue is known, you will be directed to the appropriate content residing in the Red Hat Knowledgebase within the portal. Otherwise, Red Hat identifies and documents the resolution, adds the information to the Knowledgebase, and shares it with the Red Hat community. 

You are not required to reproduce or justify an issue to receive technical support from a support engineer. And, ideally, you do not have to encounter a new problem to benefit from working with Red Hat—the goal is to avoid issues by guiding customers through planning, deployment, and operation. Our support team will work with you to troubleshoot problems and they work across teams and specialties within Red Hat to make sure the problems are resolved. Examples include consulting product experts to help with a case or bringing in your own account team to get more information on your environment.

When things go wrong in a production software environment, the ability to access the right information when you need it can make the difference between a timely return to normal operations and a costly outage. With Red Hat, you have access to product documentation, life cycle and support information, troubleshooting tools, Red Hat Knowledgebase articles, account and subscription management, security updates, and more. This helps you plan, deploy, maintain, and manage your Red Hat solutions, letting you resolve issues and maintain optimal system performance in less time. 

The most difficult issues to resolve are those that affect products from 2 or more vendors. Unlike other vendors, Red Hat takes ownership of any issue that involves one of our products. Red Hat engineers rely on their own extensive knowledge of open source products, as well as relationships with other vendors and the open source community, to find a solution that encompasses all the relevant products.

Working with Red Hat gives you access to people and resources you need to make the most out of your Red Hat solutions. Explore the resources available to you at access.redhat.com.