With the 5G ecosystem developing widely in India, RedHat bets on helping Independent Software Vendors (ISV) to move from community software to enterprise open-source technology for growth, said Abhishek Shukla, Director & Regional Head - Telco, Media & Entertainment (TME), India / South Asia - Red Hat.
Shukla told businessline, “5G and edge use cases will be based on a diverse ecosystem and as it evolves, we believe a large part of this can potentially come from India ISV, who will be the app factory to the world. Hence, from an Indian context, our focus has been to help nurture these ISVs into moving from community to enterprise open-source technology which is preferred by enterprises.”
The open source-based solution is the preferred path for developers because it has a very low entry barrier. By default, various small boutique ISV and small application developers go on building applications, which are industry-specific on open source. This is why operators and private enterprises see that there is a value proposition in choosing open-source software on the edge.
Shukla said the 5G ecosystem is not the same ecosystem that is known of, as it can now be anybody with good developing skills, who understands the end-user and their requirements and is able to create something which solves the need of the enterprise. Hence, even ISVs can be potential partners, who can be on the platform and build on the edge.
As Red Hat focuses on ISVs, it has programs such as Openshift practice builder, where support is provided to move from a monolithic architecture to a virtualised/containerised architecture which will be needed for scale 5G deployments. ISVs can join, experience, and get onboard as Red Hat partners. Shukla said, “This collaboration presents them also an opportunity to engage with many of our customers not just in India, but across the globe to showcase their use case and technology readily available to consume on Red Hat platforms.”
Telecom market
In India’s telecom market, Red Hat’s open-source solutions are used by operators, equipment manufacturers and service providers. Red Hat’s products provide a platform for deploying and managing telecommunications infrastructure, including network functions virtualisation (NFV) and software-defined networking (SDN) solutions.
“Red Hat’s open-source solutions enable telecom companies in India to reduce costs, improve flexibility, and increase scalability, allowing them to rapidly respond to changing market conditions and customer demands,” Shukla said.