Red Hat, a leading provider of open-source solutions, has partnered with the stc Group to enhance its products and services by leveraging automation and cloud-native agility. This collaboration, announced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, focuses on utilizing Red Hat OpenShift to improve scalability, flexibility, and resilience for stc Group, enabling faster time-to-market, superior disaster recovery, and increased operational efficiency. The collaboration allows stc to cater to cloud-native applications, including 5G SA core, open RAN, and edge computing.

As part of its multi-year digital transition to a cloud-native infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, the stc Group has worked on building a foundation with Red Hat OpenShift, supported by systems integration from Cisco. This collaboration resulted in the creation of a telco cloud that can implement and deliver Cloud-Native Functions (CNFs) and cloud-native applications within a complete ETSI-compliant framework. The telco cloud enhances stc’s ability to meet internal and B2B requirements, improve disaster recovery, and streamline communication between Kubernetes clusters.

Red Hat OpenShift provides stc with consistency and repeatability in running and managing applications on any underlying environment. The platform enables stc to employ cloud-native methodologies such as DevOps-driven automation for efficient service delivery, including CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure, and configuration automation. Red Hat’s certified interoperability with a wide range of CNFs across the ecosystem provides stc with a vendor-neutral foundation while offering tailored solutions for internal customers.

With the telco cloud based on Red Hat OpenShift, stc has achieved advancements in scalability, flexibility, and resilience. This has resulted in reduced deployment time, accelerated time-to-market for services, shortened software onboarding time, and decreased the total cost of ownership. Chris Wright, CTO and SVP of Global Engineering at Red Hat, emphasized the support Red Hat provides to stc in delivering new revenue streams, automated operations, and an open vendor ecosystem.

“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,” commented Chris Wright. “Red Hat is pleased to support stc in its drive to deliver new revenue streams, automated operations, and an open vendor ecosystem.”