A middleware journey with Red Hat
Having been awarded Red Hat Premier Partnership status for the 5th year running, it feels like a good time to reflect on how our delivery of expert skills and services has aligned with Red Hat’s expansion of its middleware portfolio. With a background in custom Java development, and a long history of delivering and using JBoss technology, Tier 2 became the first Premier Middleware Partner in the UK & Ireland in 2014.
Our evolution with the expansion of the Red Hat middleware portfolio
2006: Where it began
As a long-standing JBoss partner, Tier 2 landed in the Red Hat partner ecosystem in 2006. This was following Red Hat’s acquisition of JBoss – an acquisition aimed at expanding its product portfolio beyond Linux. Red Hat gained a popular open-source Java application server and a more substantial offering for Java developers, and reinforced Red Hat’s commitment to providing integrated development platform tools and services.
Tier 2 continued to provide development, consultancy and training services around JBoss AS (now JBoss EAP), and continues to do so today. Our EAP health check services – in which we review organisations existing JBoss implementations against recognised best practices – are particularly popular:
Red Hat acquisitions and what they meant for us
Red Hat acquired MetaMatrix in 2007, a technology used to make data access across a wide range of data sources and consuming applications more logical and streamlined. This was Red Hat’s first step into the world of Systems Integration. Today it forms the basis of Red Hat’s Data Virtualisation Solution, which is a key component of their overall Integration strategy:
Red Hat’s acquisitions in 2012 greatly accelerated the shift away from being a pure platform provider (i.e. Linux), and had a significant bearing on Tier 2’s strategy.
Particularly relevant to Tier 2, was the acquisition of FuseSource from Progress Software, enabling Red Hat to accelerate the delivery of application integration products and services to enterprise customers. This is now Red Hat Fuse, a distributed integration platform with standalone, cloud, and iPaaS deployment options.
Red Hat AMQ is also key to Red Hat’s integration strategy. This is a flexible messaging platform that delivers information reliably, enabling real-time integration and connecting the Internet of Things (IoT). AMQ didn’t become part of the Red Hat product portfolio by acquisition but rather by increased Red Hat contribution to open source communities such as Apache ActiveMQ and Apache Kafka.
Tier 2 runs a dedicated Integration Practice, initially focussing primarily on Fuse and AMQ, although expanding to support the ‘pillars’ of Red Hat’s “Agile Integration” philosophy:
- Distributed Integration (via Fuse);
- APIs (via 3Scale, an API Management Platform which was acquired by Red Hat in 2015);
- Containers (based on Red Hat’s OpenShift Container Platform) This is a big story in its own right, but for the moment it’s enough to understand that all Red Hat Middleware Products – including JBoss EAP, Red Hat Fuse, Red Hat AMQ and 3Scale – are available on OpenShift;
As well as working closely with global systems integrators and consultancies on major public sector integration programmes, Tier 2 has delivered solutions for customers across a variety of industry sectors, including Motability Operations, Scout Association, and EDMI. For more on agile integration, read our agile integration blog.
2012 also saw Red Hat acquire Polymita, developer of a comprehensive Business Process Management (BPM) platform. The user-friendly interface and workflow capabilities of this platform were designed to enhance productivity and collaboration while increasing control and visibility over business activities. Red Hat’s current offering in the BPM space is Process Automation Manager (previously BPM Suite), with Tier 2’s accredited consultants providing advice, guidance, knowledge transfer and development services to organisations deployin BPM solutions.
The rapid expansion of the Red Hat middleware portfolio, and the continual innovation brought about by the open source development model, ensures that Tier 2’s Premier Partnership is both exciting and challenging. At Tier 2, we’ve invested heavily in our technical skills, to remain ‘current’, and ensure we have the certifications required to maintain our partnership status. Red Hat technical certifications aren’t easy to achieve. But they do provide customers with the confidence that Tier 2 consultants have the skills and experience to help them deliver middleware solutions.
