Red Hat, TEKsystems Global Services, and AWS partner to build a cloud-based future

TEKsystems Global Services (TGS) takes a customer-first approach to help businesses keep up to date with the latest technology innovations. With proven expertise in technical strategy, design, execution, and operations, its 15-year history as a Red Hat partner is built on collaboration and a shared focus on customer service. Together, TGS and Red Hat established a collaborative partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to migrate Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization to Red Hat OpenShift and take advantage of its Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization feature. The migration demonstrates real-world experience in modernizing traditional virtualization environments and unlocks critical cloud-based opportunities. The new environment gives Red Hat’s customers increased scalability and cost-efficiency whilst allowing for a smooth transition to a future based on containers and microservices.

Benefits:

• Provided a clear path to infrastructure modernization
• Reduced infrastructure costs and risks
• Unlocked internal and external opportunities
• Gained valuable modernization experience

TGS solves complex, diverse business technology challenges. Over its more than 40-year history, the company has grown to become a leading provider of full-stack services around the world, focused on delivering the highest-level implementation, integration, and customer services. The 15-year partnership with Red Hat started as a straightforward augmentation service to increase Red Hat’s scalability. Today, it’s evolved into a collaborative professional services partnership that plays a critical role in delivering key projects.

“TEKsystems Global Services has a mature OpenShift practice and an established history of providing high-quality services to Red Hat and our direct customers in collaboration with our consulting organization,” said Seth Shevach, VP of IT, Red Hat. “TEKsystems Global Services is a logical partner for Red Hat.”

The partnership’s success relies on a mutual understanding of strengths and a belief in the value of sharing best practices.

Red Hat and TGS frequently and successfully work together to deliver for external customers. This partnership became particularly valuable when Red Hat Virtualization approached the end of its life. When Red Hat discussed this with TGS, it became clear that Red Hat OpenShift would also provide the opportunity for IT infrastructure modernization.

“Instead of looking at simply migrating from one virtualization platform to another, we collectively saw this as an opportunity for additional transformation and modernization,” said Mike Robinson, Red Hat Partner Sales Manager, TEKsystems Global Services.

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, an included feature of OpenShift, is the foundation of Red Hat’s comprehensive virtualization solution. Migrating to OpenShift would provide customers with a trusted, consistent and comprehensive modern, hybrid-cloud application platform for deploying and running critical virtualized and container-based workloads side-by-side within a single platform.

With AWS as Red Hat’s main internal cloud provider—and TGS an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner—a shared partnership with AWS made sense from both a technology and a consulting services perspective. TGS has expertise and capabilities in helping customers at any point in their cloud journeys, and adopting Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS aligns with Red Hat’s other enterprise initiatives.

“By keeping Red Hat’s other enterprise initiatives in mind—including datacenter decommissioning, pursuing a mature hybrid cloud environment, and general workload assessment for efficiencies—there was a unique opportunity for us to work with our partners at AWS to propose a more strategic solution,” said Robinson.

The modernization approach was backed by an AWS-funded investment. The partners worked closely together, following AWS best practices for a 3-phase migration: assess, mobilize, and migrate and modernize.

“Our Migration Services Competency brought forth the best practices of AWS’s Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) to start this transformation,” said Robinson. “In tandem with AWS Professional Services, Red Hat and TGS outlined a journey map to address not only our migration needs but also our hybrid cloud modernization goals.”

Provided a clear path to infrastructure modernization

OpenShift, with its OpenShift Virtualization feature, will allow Red Hat and its customers to preserve existing virtualization investments while taking advantage of the simplicity and speed of a cloud-native application environment. It will facilitate a smooth transition to a future based on containers and microservices.

Reduced infrastructure costs and risks

Running OpenShift Service on AWS will allow Red Hat to right-size its infrastructure, scale resources efficiently, and decommission legacy platforms. Enhanced visibility will reduce the risk of vulnerabilities and breaches and improve infrastructural integrity. Well-defined lines clarify ownership and accountability.

Unlocked internal and external opportunities

The partnership between Red Hat, TGS, and AWS allowed Red Hat to modernize its IT infrastructure. Moreover, it unlocks important external cloud-based opportunities with customers seeking to modernize their legacy virtualized infrastructure.

Gained valuable modernization experience

The migration from Red Hat Virtualization to OpenShift has given the partners real-world experience in modernizing legacy virtualization environments. They can apply the expertise gained—individually or together—to the advantage of future customer migration projects.

With the initial ‘assess’ phase completed, Red Hat could fully understand the current state of its infrastructure. In collaboration with TGS and AWS, it established a well-defined case for migration and modernization and outlined a strong roadmap and estimates.

“Having provided an in-depth executive summary of our findings and a recommended path forward, Red Hat is in an excellent position to move ahead,” said Robinson. “We are now in the initial phases of a successful long-term migration.”

Equally important, this migration supports Red Hat’s future ambitions.

“The new infrastructure and 3-way partnership align with Red Hat’s strategy for open, modern, and sustainable standards,” said Shevach. “Partnerships are key to all our futures, and the value we have already seen coming from the strong collaborative partnership built through this project is a testament to its importance.”