Red Hat, Inc, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the launch of Red Hat Cloud for Government, a consulting platform that helps government agencies at all levels easily deliver a secure cloud strategy and infrastructure. The solution includes a set of processes and tools that help agencies easily manage and run cloud services through their own data centers, in the process helping them meet modernization goals and “cloud first” requirements.

Red Hat Cloud for Government helps agencies that are facing serious budget challenges, security concerns, and more complex operations to deploy clouds more efficiently and cost-effectively. As part of its government offerings, Red Hat’s consultative services will provide agencies with hands-on, risk-free assessments from Red Hat's government IT experts, while access to a variety of cloud service providers will provide agencies with options to better manage technology costs.

Red Hat’s mentoring approach is informed by its years of experience and understanding of what it means to offer a safe, standardized, and fully-compliant cloud infrastructure. Via Red Hat Cloud for Government, Red Hat will work with government agencies to standardize and automate infrastructure that is already in place, and then identify opportunities to simplify service delivery with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) tools based on the award-winning OpenShift by Red Hat. The Red Hat Cloud for Government team will then look for opportunities to combine those tools with FedRAMP-compliant public clouds from partners such as Amazon Web Services, Autonomic Resources, and Dell, offering a seamless, easily managed infrastructure.

Red Hat Cloud for Government follows Red Hat's commitment to security standards and regulations, enabling agencies to comply with several regulatory standards, including:

• Center for Internet Security (CIS) Level 1
• Common Criteria Certification
• Defense Information Assurance Risk Management Framework (DIARMF)
• Federal Information Processing Standards 140-2 encryption (FIPS 140-2 encryption)
• Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)
• FedRAMP
• Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH Security and Privacy)
• Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)

“The Red Hat Cloud for Government program can help agencies save time and money, become more agile, and above all, make it easier to take advantage of the powerful open source and cloud forces that are changing the industry. Budget-strapped agencies want to know how to effectively implement new technologies like IaaS and PaaS, and use third-party cloud providers without making things too expensive or too complicated. Red Hat Cloud for Government consultants provide the tools for success as these agencies look to leverage the benefits and capabilities of the cloud." -- Paul Smith, general manager and vice president, Public Sector, Red Hat