At the OpenStack Summit 2013, Red Hat announced RDO, a freely available, community-supported distribution of OpenStack. OpenStack is an open source cloud operating system that controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter.

In addition to the new release, Red Hat also announced today the launch of an official Cloud Infrastructure Partner Program, "a multi-tiered program designed for third-party commercial companies that offer hardware, software and services for customers to implement cloud infrastructure solutions powered by Red Hat OpenStack." I'm excited about the  solution opportunities that are possible by combining UCS and Nexus offerings  with Red Hat on the OpenStack cloud infrastructure.

Read the announcement here:

Red Hat OpenStack Announcement

Why is this a good fit for Cisco's Customers?

Cisco believes in a world of many clouds, and consistent with this basic tenant, continues to support open source cloud computing platforms such as OpenStack and CloudStack. Cisco's open architecture, multi-vendor approach to Unified Data Center brings together best-of-breed technologies that change the economics of the data center, helps to reduce the cost of operations, and allows IT to easily deploy applications and be more responsive to the business.

According to Parvesh Sethi, Senior Vice President, Cisco Services,We have seen a tremendous interest in and pent-up demand for OpenStack from a broad range of Cisco's most strategic customers, and we fully expect OpenStack to be widely adopted. Until now, there have been limited production-grade fully supported solutions available.  We are therefore excited to be exploring opportunities to expand our relationship to collaborate closely with Red Hat on the OpenStack cloud infrastructure.

How does Cisco's Unified Data Center strategy support the RDO announcement?

The Cisco Unified Data Center brings together networking, computing, storage, management, and security resources into a unified platform that provides the core infrastructure for cloud computing.

It is based on three pillars of innovation including Cisco Unified Fabric, Unified Computing, and Unified Management. Cisco's Unified Data Center offers an ideal platform for OpenStack environments  including RDO and is fully qualified with specific Cisco reference architectures including Cisco UCS B-Series Blade and UCS C-Series Rack servers, Cisco Nexus as well as Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud.

How does RDO play into the Cisco cloud strategy?

Cisco's OpenStack strategy begins with ensuring that OpenStack networks support the sophisticated enterprise networking features most customers are looking for.  As part of that broader strategy its critical that OpenStack distributions like RDO support these networking functions as part of their offering.