IBM, Red Hat Expand Telefónica’s Cloud Push

Image source: Telefónica Image source: Telefónica Telefónica Tech signed a deal with IBM and Red Hat to integrate Red Hat’s OpenShift platform into a new cloud service marketed at enterprises across Telefónica’s footprint in Europe and Latin America. The integration will be marketed as the Telefónica Red Hat OpenShift Service (TROS), which will tap into the use of containers to help organizations modernize their cloud applications and drive their digital transformation. It will allow those organizations to migrate applications to hybrid cloud or multi-cloud environments using either private or public clouds from hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). “It is going to be the way forward and what many customers who want to evolve their business models,” explained Santiago Madruga, VP for ecosystem success in EMEA at Red Hat, in an interview with SDxCentral. “When going digital, it’s not just putting workloads on the cloud but really transforming businesses.” Madruga added that the use of OpenShift also allows for the microsegmentation of application components that will open the door for edge distributed cloud work. OpenShift is based on the Kubernetes container orchestration project that allows for the migration of applications across different cloud and on-premises environments. A recent report from TBR Senior Analyst Catie Merrill noted that Red Hat’s OpenShift platform has four-times as many customers as it did before IBM acquired the company for $34 billion back in mid-2019. IBM is providing its Cloud Pak containerized software products, Spectrum Fusion storage, Power hardware, and professional services to the offering. The deal also builds on past work between IBM and Telefónica, including a multi-year agreement signed last year tied to Telefónica using IBM to power the carrier’s first-ever, cloud-native, 5G core network platform. The TROS platform will take the place of Telefónica Tech’s legacy Cloud Garden and Virtual Data Center products. IBM and Red Hat were both central to Telefónica overhauling its Cloud Garden platform early last year. The new move is also the latest by Telefónica as it continues to adopt hybrid cloud and virtualization to bolster its competitiveness. Telefónica Tech last week deepened its work with Cisco by adding the vendor’s SD-WAN, security, and secure access service edge (SASE) products as managed services via its Tech digital business, which targets enterprise networking needs. That followed on the heels of Telefónica Tech tapping Netskope to power a secure service edge (SSE) component of the carrier’s Security Edge platform. These deals have come as the telecom giant is also asking government regulators for help in battling against what it claims are unfair advantages of cloud giants running services across its network. The carrier was among a handful of large Europe-based operators that earlier this year called on the European Union to introduce rules that effectively shift some of their assumed infrastructure costs to companies that financially benefit from the services they provide. “The current situation is simply not sustainable. The investment burden must be shared in a more proportionate way,” the CEOs at Vodafone, Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, and Orange wrote in a joint statement. “Today, video streaming, gaming, and social media originated by a few digital content platforms accounts for over 70% of all traffic running over the networks.” These unnamed but well-known platforms “are profiting from hyper-scaling business models at little cost while network operators shoulder the required investments in connectivity. At the same time, our retail markets are in perpetual decline in terms of profitability,” the CEOs said. Despite their power as the leading providers of mobile service throughout the continent, the executives claim they are no match for the “strong market positions, asymmetric bargaining power, and the lack of a level regulatory playing field” enjoyed by tech giants. “Consequently, we cannot make a viable return on our very significant investments, putting further infrastructure development at risk,” the CEOs added. “If we don’t fix this unbalanced situation Europe will fall behind other world regions, ultimately degrading the quality of experience for all consumers.”