The European Space Agency Builds a Private Cloud Platform With Red Hat

ESA developed an on-premise, private cloud infrastructure that offers advanced IT services for the agency's user communities and has proven to be flexible and reliable. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) January 23, 2015 - DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Red Hat, Inc, (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the European Space Agency (ESA) has developed an on-premise, private cloud infrastructure that offers advanced IT services for the agency's user communities. The infrastructure partially uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and has proven to be flexible and reliable - critical for ESA's environment. After seeing exceptional results, ESA has finalized the implementation of a similar infrastructure for another datacenter.

ESA's mission is to ensure that investments in space developments are used to benefit all European citizens. Its employees and service providers manage the IT infrastructure and services necessary for everyday corporate activities and offer advanced solutions to restricted groups of power users who need the highest levels of service availability. The Agency's IT department has to support users operating across Europe who need specific applications, which - along with their data - must be available at all times.

To meet these requirements, ESA decided to develop a private cloud infrastructure, called ESA Cloud. This cloud infrastructure is based on VCE systems, on a blade x86 architecture, and is managed entirely by Orange Business Services. ESA chose Red Hat Enterprise Linux as one of the platforms supported in the ESA Cloud.

The ESA IT department hosts a variety of services and environments in the ESA cloud, including:
- Software development and testing environments
- Satellite data reprocessing environments
- Document management systems
- More traditional corporate IT services used by the different teams in their day-to-day operations.

The ESA team worked closely with Red Hat Consulting during the implementation and customization of the Red Hat operating system in the ESA project to ensure that all requirements were met. This phase was particularly important because these requirements dramatically differed from those of any other commercial organizations, and quite often, the scenarios arising during the project were absolutely new.

Complex virtual environments can now be provisioned within minutes directly by the end users as opposed to months, delivering true agility and allowing ESA to reach business and scientific targets earlier. Furthermore, creating a new infrastructure - modern, highly virtualized, and open standards-based - and deploying the ESA Cloud has allowed for simpler, more effective management of all services. The ESA IT team can now monitor computing resources consumed by its users in real time, enabling optimization of the available capacity and streamlining chargeback operations to internal customers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is one of the operating systems of ESA's overall cloud infrastructure. The services offered are usually made to support specific projects, which require an intense use of resources for a limited amount of time. For ESA, it is critical to provide the resources required by these users, at the exact moment in which they need them, and the new private cloud platform enables them to do just that.

ESA's cloud project is not over yet. While the Frascati site has already gone into production, a similar site has been completed in Darmstadt, Germany. The new site delivers analogous services and allows geographic disaster recovery to overcome any possible large-scale calamity. ESA is also working to increase the number of services available in the cloud to its users.

Supporting Quotes:
Josè Fernandez Balseiro, technical officer and project manager for the ESA Private Cloud "Because of the very unique type of services and applications we have, regulated by rigorous and precise SLAs, technology is absolutely critical to us and we cannot compromise on it in any way. In order to reach the highest levels of flexibility, the IT department decided to deploy a private cloud. We can say that the Red Hat platform has been an important element in contributing to create our own private cloud, which is crucial for our business and which enables us to offer the most advanced and reliable services for our technical and scientific users."

Gianni Anguilletti, country manager, Italy, Red Hat
"The European Space Agency has a very unique set of requirements, which are difficult to be matched by any other organization in the world. Specifically, the technology platforms they choose need to be highly reliable and flexible, as well as consistently delivering excellent performance. The choice made by ESA highlights once again that Red Hat solutions can be a cornerstone of the most critical infrastructures of the market."

ABOUT RED HAT
Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact.

Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations".

In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

###

space

Other Related Press Releases