Announcing Partner Validation as a new entry point into the Red Hat Ecosystem

Partners now have more options to promote their products on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Red Hat OpenShift

Red Hat has a long history of working with partners to deliver trusted solutions that solve complex business problems. Central to this commitment is the close collaboration needed to ensure that all products involved work well together and lead to successful implementations and operations for our mutual customers.

As we look to expand how we work with technology providers, it’s important to consider the different ways in which they conduct platform verification and integration tests. With this in mind, we are introducing Partner Validation for workloads that run on Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® or Red Hat® OpenShift® , and for hardware infrastructure that runs with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This new offering allows software and hardware vendors to have a presence in the Ecosystem Catalog, while relying on their own criteria and methodology to verify the compatibility of their products and ensure the supportability of the complete stack.

This option complements Red Hat certification, which remains the preferred framework for securing compliance with our platform requirements and best practices in areas such as interoperability, lifecycle management, security, and support. By pursuing certification, our partners benefit from Red Hat tools and review services, and our customers gain access to a highly trusted ecosystem that helps lower integration costs and reduce support incidents.

While Red Hat certification has many advantages, there are use cases where it does not always fit a vendor's needs. For example, there are companies that are new to Red Hat technologies and have not yet incorporated all of the requirements that our certification entails, or situations where Red Hat certification can’t easily fold into the processes that partners use for platform integration tests. These vendors can utilize Partner Validation to recognize their efforts and promote their solutions.

To attain Partner Validation, vendors must conduct their own verification work, provide information about the versions used, and have Red Hat Enterprise Linux and/or Red Hat OpenShift listed as supported platforms in their documentation. Our partner program provides technical resources such as training and product subscriptions to help vendors with the validation process. Once completed, partners get a dedicated product page in our Ecosystem Catalog where they can link additional content to guide decision makers.

Here is a summary comparing our two offerings:

By pursuing these options, partners can increase awareness of their solutions, reaching target customers and our broad network of technology providers, system integrators, resellers, and distributors. Together, we can pursue new opportunities in fast-growing areas like artificial intelligence, virtualization, or cloud-native network functions (CNFs).

How to get started

If you haven't yet, register your company in our program. Once registered, you'll use the Red Hat Connect site to provide information about your product, and have the option of pursuing Red Hat Certification or Partner Validation. See our documentation for requirements and step-by-step guidance.

If you have any questions or comments, reach out to our team.