Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the Red Hat Ansible Automation Certification Program to more readily deliver tested, trusted and supported Red Hat Ansible Automation. With more than two million customer systems now managed by Red Hat Ansible Tower, the certification program is intended to help further accelerate user deployment times by providing improved security, reliability and consistency of content.



As IT infrastructures grow in complexity, the need for automation becomes more pressing. To help address the challenge, Red Hat is driving Ansible into more domains and expanding the supported use-cases for automation across infrastructure, networks, containers and more, enabling users to more easily automate more tasks in more ways. In addition, to help organizations more securely expand their automation, Red Hat is now offering certified Ansible content, helping users mitigate risks and security concerns associated with consuming automation content from unknown sources.



Trusted, Tested, Supported Automation

Ansible Modules and Plugins that are developed through Red Hat and partners can be submitted to the program, where they are scanned against known vulnerabilities, checked for compatibility and validated to work in production. This provides assurances to end users that a certified module will perform as expected in mission-critical environments.



Red Hat Ansible Automation and Red Hat Ansible Tower users can use the program to more easily find and access certified modules, including those from third-parties. Regardless of whether a module originates from Red Hat or a partner, all content within the program undergoes rigorous evaluation and testing. Additionally, the certified content will have a similar lifecycle to Ansible Engine, are regularly re-evaluated for certification qualification over time, and are fully-backed with Red Hat’s award-winning support.



Ansible Certified Partners

At introduction, Cisco (ACI, NSO, NX-OS, and UCS product families), CyberArk, F5 Networks, Infoblox, NetApp and Nokia are all participating in the certification program. Together, these ecosystem partners are expected to offer more than 275 Ansible Certified modules in addition to what Red Hat currently supports, helping expand the breadth of enterprise automation.



Supporting Quotes

Joe Fitzgerald, vice president, Management, Red Hat

"The sheer complexity of modern IT environments make automation a necessity, but production environments require automation tools that are tested and trusted to work in tandem with critical systems. With certified Ansible modules available through the Red Hat Ansible Automation Certification Program, we are providing users with ready access to rigorously tested content with performance that has been verified, all backed by the support and expertise for which Red Hat is known."



Ranga Rao, senior director, Product Management and Solutions Engineering, Cisco

"Automation is a key focus for modern data centers, and Cisco is delighted to be a partner in the Red Hat Ansible Automation Certification Program. The combined capabilities of Ansible, Cisco ACI, NXOS and UCS enable IT organizations to simplify the management of their day-0 , day-1 and day-2 operations in mission critical production environments."



Adam Bosnian, executive vice president, Global Business Development, CyberArk

"CyberArk supports the goals of the Red Hat Ansible Automation Certification Program to give organizations the confidence they need to further embrace automation, while prioritizing security. CyberArk's inclusion in the Certification Program is another step toward building privileged access security into modern infrastructure initiatives, adding credibility and support for our joint solutions. This milestone also extends CyberArk's integrations across the Red Hat portfolio to broaden our reach and impact within global organizations."



Calvin Rowland, senior vice president, Business Development, F5 Networks

"With the Red Hat Ansible Automation Certification Program, our joint customers will get the end to end support on automating F5 application services that mission-critical environments demand."



Biren Fondekar, vice president, Engineering, NetApp

"Ansible plays a significant role in NetApp's mission to empower DevOps teams with data, tools and services that deliver strategic advantage. By working closely with Ansible to release 66 new modules through the Red Hat Ansible Automation Certification Program, we’ve demonstrated our commitment to providing more consistent developer environments. In a world where the demands on developers’ time and resources are exponentially expanding, our collaboration with Ansible delivers the innovation to enable developers to create without waiting on IT teams and, ultimately, maintain their ability to drive business value."

"The sheer complexity of modern IT environments make automation a necessity, but production environments require automation tools that are tested and trusted to work in tandem with critical systems. With certified Ansible modules available through the Red Hat Ansible Automation Certification Program, we are providing users with ready access to rigorously tested content with performance that has been verified, all backed by the support and expertise for which Red Hat is known." Joe Fitzgerald vice president and general manager, Management, Red Hat