Hitachi Vantara has announced a new co-engineered solution with Cisco with Red Hat OpenShift, a co-engineered joint solution leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes, which combines Cisco’s compute and networking systems with Hitachi Vantara’s Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) arrays using Red Hat OpenShift container management tools.
Marcel Escorcio, VP Sales America’s International at Hitachi Vantara
Hitachi Vantara has announced a new co-engineered solution with Cisco designed for Red Hat OpenShift, a 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.
Cisco and Vantara have had previous relationships around the digital world and the start of digital transformation,” said Marcel Escorcio, VP Sales America’s International at Hitachi Vantara. “The digital world and the start of digital transformation have added to the number of applications for managing complexity and risk in aligning. Together they hold about 92% of the marketplace and we are in alignment with them. It’s the cherry on top of the cake.”
VSP1 provides platforms to manage these different workloads. Cisco provides best-in-class compute and networking, Hitachi Vantara delivers high-performance, resilient data management infrastructure platform, and Red Hat OpenShift ensures scalable, secure container orchestration. This partnership builds on existing relationships between the three companies but represents a new level of collaboration with a jointly validated, integrated solution specifically designed for hybrid cloud and containerized workloads. Hitachi Vantara and Cisco have a long-standing partnership in delivering converged infrastructure solutions, while the integration with Red Hat OpenShift brings a new cloud-native, containerized focus.
“DevOps and edge computing are pillars of growth, and key areas driving adoption,” Escorsio stated. “Reliability and scalability are important pillars of growth. Enterprises are increasingly adopting containerized applications to modernize IT infrastructure, yet they face operational complexity, scalability, security concerns, and sustainability challenges. A major hurdle is that traditional IT teams are not fully trained on Kubernetes and containerized infrastructure, creating a skills gap that slows adoption.
Escorsio noted that most customers get the need for these changes.
“They understand details, including how to connect the dots,” he said. “It’s not as simple as moving workloads. New customers do get the container side of things, however.”
The partnership combines Cisco’s compute and networking systems with Hitachi Vantara’s VSPs arrays using Red Hat OpenShift container management tools.
“It’s more of a net-new in itself,” Escorsio said. “We have always had a relationship with them. This makes it easier for both customers and the partner ecosystem.”
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 application container market is expected to witness substantial growth, due to the rapid rise in AI-led digital transformation endeavors,” Escorsio indicated.
He also indicated that the impact will be significant for both companies.
“The significance of this is that it is creating a simplified GoToMarket that customers don’t have to build on their own,” Escorsio stated. “Data, scalabity and AI – all of these will be in everything. This will require simple stacks, and either we will assist customers to manage them or we will manage it for them. “Everyone wants more market share and this will help them all deepen their footprint and be a win-win for everyone. These are market and customer relevant solutions.
“The channel is heavily involved in this, Escorsio said, particularly where big customers with large operational deployments are involved. “We have put Hitachi Red Hat and Cisco together as part of this channel approach.” Channel partners benefit from higher-margin opportunities by providing services around integration, AI-driven workload optimization, and ongoing management. It will also drive modernization for their customers.
The Hitachi and Cisco converged solution for Red Hat OpenShift offers several key benefits, including Accelerated Application Deployment, which provides pre-validated and certified infrastructure to help reduce time to production, enabling businesses to deploy applications faster and more efficiently. Its unified platform for cloud operations also offers a more seamless experience across on-premises and cloud environments, reducing risk and enabling smoother workload mobility and rebalancing. Data resilience is facilitated by Hitachi Vantara VSP arrays that deliver continuous uptime with real-time monitoring.
“This marks a strategic shift toward Kubernetes and AI-driven automation, enabling customers to accelerate their hybrid cloud modernization efforts with a turnkey, enterprise-grade platform,” Escorsio concluded
