Red Hat chief: We’re committed to helping customers adapt to new normal
Red Hat, a global leader in open-source solutions, is committed to supporting its customers, partners and communities in adapting to the new normal, said Andrew Habgood, senior director, Partner & Alliances, Red Hat Asia Pacific.
He made the remark at the one-day virtual Red Hat Asia Pacific Partner Conference 2020 on August 20 under the theme “The Future is Open”.
“This year has been challenging to say the least. We know that across countries, regions and industries, it’s been a pretty tumultuous year so far. And this is not going to change anytime soon. Red Hat is absolutely committed to support our customers, partners and open-source communities in adapting to the new normal and being ready to find new opportunities as we go forward,” Habgood said.
“While everyone has been impacted in different ways, most customers today are still reacting to the Covid-19 crisis. They’re simply focused on business continuity and reacting to the urgent needs of their customers,” he stated.
Habgood sees three customer profiles, each with very different needs.
He said some customers are “retracting” their businesses. These customers may be pausing, or renegotiating current terms. They need to reduce costs and increase efficiency, but do it in a way that doesn't affect their bottom line.
“Certainly, patient discussions are needed to find solutions that didn’t work before. Solutions that can help them reduce costs, optimise infrastructure and also focus on user experience, digital channels and innovation in development. That will help them prepare to pivot into new areas and change their business models according to the market,” Habgood said.
“Then, of course, there are [a second type of] customers who want to protect their current business models while preparing for the future, staying the course. When we look at cost efficiencies, energy, technology and electronics are just some of the vertical industries that are impacted,” he said.
Habgood said Red Hat is helping customers make sure they are optimising the value of their existing subscriptions and using technologies such as Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Insights and Ansible Automation to maximise the benefits of investments they’ve made, and also prepare them for hybrid cloud or cloud native migration.
These customers, he said, are looking to carry out new projects, or they need to balance this against not creating new risks to their existing models.
The third type are those who are scaling, accelerating or needing to scale to keep up with new demand, Habgood said. These are vertical industries such as telecommunications, education, public sector, healthcare and financial services.
These customers have had to invest rapidly to support the new growing capacity of their IT environments, he said. They need to innovate quickly and accelerate development of new initiatives. Transforming and developing capabilities is absolutely key to this, he added.
