Red Hat partners with stc Group to boost cloud-native agility

Red Hat, a world expert in open source solutions, has announced its collaboration with the stc Group to enhance the latter's products and services, utilising automation and cloud-native agility. This collaboration was revealed at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), Barcelona.

With the aid of Red Hat OpenShift, stc Group has improved scalability, flexibility and resilience, enabling a faster time-to-market, superior disaster recovery and boosted operational efficiency. Now, stc is set up to cater to cloud-native applications such as 5G SA core, open RAN, and edge computing.

The stc Group, a provider of digital infrastructure, cloud computing and other digital services, has embarked on a multi-year digital transition to a cloud-native infrastructure across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With systems integration support from Cisco, the company has built its foundation with Red Hat OpenShift. As a result, stc has widened its cloud capability by incorporating various cloud-native and virtualised network applications from numerous vendors.

This collaboration resulted in the creation of a new telco cloud for stc. This cloud can implement and deliver Cloud-Native Functions (CNFs) and cloud-native applications, such as 5G core components or edge computing services, within a complete ETSI-compliant framework.

Stc is now better positioned to serve internal and B2B requirements and improve disaster recovery. Furthermore, stc's Kubernetes clusters, with the support of Red Hat OpenShift and Cisco Network Services Orchestrator, can communicate more seamlessly with management and orchestration components.

Red Hat OpenShift provides stc consistency and repeatability in running and managing applications on any underlying environment. The involvement of Red Hat OpenShift function, including CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure and configuration automation, observability and multicluster management, allowed stc to employ cloud-native methodologies such as DevOps-driven automation for efficient service delivery.

Notably, Red Hat provides certified interoperability with a wide range of CNFs across the ecosystem. This gives stc a vendor-neutral foundation while offering tailored solutions for internal customers, allowing them to present tangible value and propel business growth. With built-in security features of Red Hat OpenShift, stc can systematise network and container isolation and regulate access to application data.

With the new telco cloud based on Red Hat OpenShift, stc has advanced in terms of scalability, flexibility and resilience. This development has helped the company to reduce deployment time, hasten time to market for services, shorten software onboarding time, and decrease the total cost of ownership.

Chris Wright, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Global Engineering at Red Hat commented on the collaboration, saying, "The agility and dynamism that stc needs as a business are made possible with more responsive, scalable infrastructure based on cloud-native approaches and technologies."

"Stc is taking advantage of Red Hat's unified hybrid cloud application platform and ecosystem integration to gain flexibility and freedom of choice as it develops its next-generation network and services. Red Hat is pleased to support stc in its drive to deliver new revenue streams, automated operations and an open vendor ecosystem."