Hitachi Vantara announced a new co-engineered solution with Cisco designed for Red Hat OpenShift, the industry's leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes. The Cisco and Hitachi Adaptive Solutions for Converged Infrastructure joint solution combines Cisco's compute and networking systems with Hitachi Vantara's Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) arrays using Red Hat OpenShift container management tools. The integrated infrastructure solution helps enterprises gain a competitive edge by increasing agility and resilience while reducing energy consumption with AI-powered data orchestration.

The introduction of Red Hat OpenShift containers on Cisco and Hitachi Adaptive Solutions for Converged Infrastructure comes at a critical time for enterprises facing the challenges of deploying and managing multiple applications across environments. According to a recent report, the application container market is expected to witness substantial growth, due to the rapid rise in AI-led digital transformation endeavors that are driving enterprises to adopt container technology. This shift is essential for organizations that seek to replace traditional IT tasks with automation software, effectively reducing deployment timelines for applications while also improving their performance and scalability. However, a Red Hat report  revealed 67% of organizations have delayed or slowed container-based application deployments due to security concerns.

This integrated solution helps simplify container adoption by providing a pre-validated enterprise infrastructure to accelerate application development, improve operational consistency and enhance resiliency for latency-critical workloads. By leveraging AI-powered, environmentally responsible data management and a trusted data platform, enterprises can increase confidence, reduce risk and lower their environmental footprint.

"Organizations today are under immense pressure to modernize their IT infrastructure while meeting sustainability goals. Our collaboration with Cisco and Red Hat reflects our commitment to delivering solutions that support both business innovation and environmental responsibility," said Dan McConnell, senior vice president, product management and enterprise infrastructure, Hitachi Vantara. "This converged solution can empower businesses to build and scale containerized applications more seamlessly, delivering high performance and greater operational consistency."

"Cisco's collaboration with Hitachi Vantara and Red Hat marks a significant milestone for customers looking to modernize their data centers for a new era of agility, efficiency and resilience," said Jeremy Foster, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Compute. "Together, we have created a powerful and scalable solution that streamlines modern application development through the seamless deployment of container technology on the Cisco and Hitachi Adaptive Solutions for Converged Infrastructure."

The Hitachi and Cisco converged solution for Red Hat OpenShift offers several key benefits:

• Accelerated Application Deployment: Pre-validated and certified infrastructure helps reduce time to production, enabling businesses to deploy applications faster and more efficiently.
• Operational Consistency: Unified platform for cloud operations offers a more seamless experience across on-premises and cloud environments, reducing risk and enabling smoother workload mobility and rebalancing.
• Unbreakable Data Resilience: Hitachi Vantara VSP arrays deliver continuous uptime with real-time monitoring and geo-redundancy to help protect critical data and maintain accessibility.
• Enhanced Sustainability: Recognized as a top storage solution by ENERGY STAR, VSP arrays optimize power usage, helping enterprises meet their sustainability objectives.

This converged solution delivers a unified platform for deploying and managing containerized and virtualized applications across on-premises and cloud environments. With an increasing demand for application mobility and operational agility and sustainability, VSP improves performance by enabling organizations to consolidate more workloads onto fewer systems. Hitachi storage also recently earned the ENERGY STAR certification and was recognized as the best storage solution for performance and energy efficiency, holding the top three ranked positions in this category. Coupled with Red Hat OpenShift capabilities, customers gain a consistent application platform that simplifies the deployment and management of containerized workloads across hybrid cloud environments.

"In today's fast-evolving IT landscape, businesses are under increasing pressure to modernize their infrastructure while managing complexity and risk," said Ryan King, senior director, Hardware Partners, Red Hat. "Red Hat OpenShift offers a trusted, comprehensive application platform that empowers organizations to achieve cloud-native modernization in alignment with their business goals. By enabling Hitachi Vantara and Cisco infrastructure on Red Hat OpenShift, we can provide a enterprise-ready solution to help streamline container adoption and support scalable operations."

The converged solution sets itself apart with its comprehensive approach to private and hybrid cloud infrastructure. Enterprises can benefit from faster time to value and lower operational risks. Additionally, the solution's built-in automation and scalable architecture make it an ideal choice for organizations aiming to modernize their IT landscape while remaining environmentally responsible. The solution is available through Hitachi EverFlex, delivering hybrid cloud solutions as a service on a consumption-based, flexible and scalable model for organizations to manage their resource needs with minimal upfront investment.