One of the fundamental principles of open source is that it involves being “open” – and this is the philosophy that Red Hat embraces in its approach to its partner ecosystem.

Everyone in the industry talks about the need for a strong ecosystem and decent relationships between partners, distributors, vendors, and ISVs, but few will take the concept of being “open” as much to heart as Red Hat. .

“This is a collaborative effort between the various companies that come together in this ecosystem,” said Santiago Madruga, Red Hat vice president, pre-sales and services, EMEA. “Coming from an open source community, I think that’s an important value that we bring. For many years, it’s not just a transactional relationship, it’s something very strategic to their business that needs to be maintained and evolved appropriately.

“We work closely with our ecosystem partners, to ensure that customers, their customers, our customers together, will be happy with all of us for years to come. So we care a lot about the lifecycle of the solution, which is something that we as an ecosystem can scale well over many years, and customers can be happy and trust that ecosystem.

Open source has grown in popularity over the past two decades and most customers understand the technology and why they would choose the software. At the same time, the seller channel has also gained in importance and is considered to be one of the main routes to market.

“These are very exciting times in the industry in general and I think Red Hat is very well positioned to play a key role, along with our partners, and we are more aware than ever of the value of our partners. to digital,” Madruga said.

“This is accelerating and becoming more and more of an imperative in different industries that are not only changing their technologies, but also their business models. Perhaps the novelty is that technology is becoming more and more accessible to companies that want to use it to innovate and disrupt in their various areas of work. »

The emergence of hybrid working, a focus on digital transformation, and customer demand for flexibility are all playing into Red Hat’s hands, and Madruga is optimistic about the outlook for the rest of 2022.

“All customers need to go more digital and use technology to innovate and improve their own business,” he said. “It could be by getting more customers and driving customer demand with new offerings. It could also be simply by becoming more efficient and using technology to reduce industry costs.

“Today, everyone is very clear that the best way to achieve all of these business goals is through technology. So I think we are absolutely in the right place.