• Red Hat updates ‘distributed, cloud-native integration solution’ Fuse
• Also introduces Fuse online, a new fully hosted, ‘low-code’ integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) offering
• Red Hat’s efforts are a response to a broad industry focus on application infrastructure and middleware, according to Gartner

One of the critical areas for enterprise cloud migration is around finessing application integration across the hybrid cloud/enterprise IT boundaries -  getting applications or data working in one environment to work properly with applications operating on the other. The term ‘agile integration’ - a circle-squaring activity if ever there was one - is the phrase that trips off software vendor lips, but actually making it work is clearly much more difficult.

Red Hat claims its solutions are getting there.  It’s just announced the latest version of its Fuse ‘distributed, cloud-native integration solution’, Red Hat Fuse 7, and it’s introduced a new fully hosted, ‘low-code’ integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) offering called Fuse Online, which it claims can make the integration process even easier and more effective.

Fuse 7 sees Red Hat expanding its integration capabilities natively to the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. It claims this will provide customers a unified solution for creating, extending and deploying containerized integration services across hybrid cloud environments. Red Hat suggests the ability to quickly and efficiently integrate custom and packaged applications across the hybrid cloud can be a competitive differentiator for organizations today.

Fuse Online is what Red Hat is calling an iPaaS (integration Platform-as-a-Service) offering and claims its focus is on ease of use, which should mean diverse users such as integration experts, application developers, and even ‘non-technical citizen integrators’, might independently participate in the integration process using a single platform.

It introduces a browser-based graphical interface with ‘low-code’ drag-and-drop capabilities with more than 200 predefined connectors and components based on Apache Camel. It includes more than 50 new connectors for big data, cloud services, and SaaS endpoints, which organisations can adapt and scale for legacy systems, APIs, IoT devices, and cloud-native applications, claims Red Hat.

Red Hat’s efforts are a response to a broad industry focus on application infrastructure and middleware, according to researchers Gartner.  It claims that enterprise digital transformation will drive spending on this segment to over $30 billion in 2018, much of it on IoT and artificial intelligence, but all underpinned of course by the cloud.

Gartner says that the wider technology trends driving the AIM (application and middleware) market are migration to cloud platforms and services, ever-increasing demand for near-real-time data and analytics, a shift toward an API economy, rapid proliferation of IoT endpoints, and deployment of AI.

"A new approach to application infrastructure is the foundation organizations build their digital initiatives upon, and therefore robust demand in the AIM market is testament to the occurrence of digitalization," says Fabrizio Biscotti, research vice president at Gartner. "The more companies move toward digital business models, the greater the need for modern application infrastructure to connect data, software, users and hardware in ways that deliver new digital services or products."

Provides a single, unified platform for collaboration between integration experts, application developers and business users

RALEIGH, N.C. — June 4, 2018 —

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the availability of Red Hat Fuse 7, the next major release of its distributed, cloud-native integration solution, and introduced a new fully hosted low-code integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) offering, Fuse Online. With Fuse 7, Red Hat is expanding its innovative integration capabilities natively to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, the industry's most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform. Fuse gives customers a unified solution for creating, extending and deploying containerized integration services across hybrid cloud environments.

Red Hat simplifies what could otherwise be a cumbersome task—integrating disparate applications, services, devices and APIs across the extended enterprise—and enables its customers to achieve agile integration to their advantage instead. Saurabh Sharma principal analyst and consultant, Ovum

The ability to quickly and efficiently integrate custom and packaged applications across the hybrid cloud can be a competitive differentiator for organizations today. Now with an iPaaS offering, Fuse enables diverse users such as integration experts, application developers, and non-technical citizen integrators to independently participate in the integration process using a single platform, while maintaining compliance with corporate governance and processes.

The latest release introduces a browser-based graphical interface with low-code drag-and-drop capabilities that enable business users and developers alike to more rapidly integrate applications and services using more than 200 predefined connectors and components. These components are based on Apache Camel and include more than 50 new connectors for big data, cloud services, and SaaS endpoints, which organizations can adapt and scale for legacy systems, APIs, IoT devices, and cloud-native applications. Customers can also extend services and integrations for use by third-party providers and partners.

By taking advantage of capabilities in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Fuse offers greater productivity and manageability in private, public or hybrid clouds. This native OpenShift-based experience provides portability for services and integrations across runtime environments and enables diverse users to work more collaboratively.

Fuse can be deployed alongside Red Hat 3scale API Management, Red Hat’s award-winning API management offering, to add capabilities for security, monetization, rate limiting, and community features around services composed from Fuse or elsewhere. Combined with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Fuse and 3scale API Management form the foundation of Red Hat’s agile integration architecture. 3scale API Management 2.2, released May 2018, introduced new tools for graphical configuration of policies, policy extensibility and shareability, and expanded TLS support—all to make it easier for business users to implement their organizations API program.

Leading organizations from around the world, such as Dirección Nacional de Migraciones and Lufthansa Technik have deployed Red Hat’s integration technologies, such as Fuse and 3scale API Management, to more quickly, easily and reliably integrate systems across their hybrid cloud environments.

Availability

Red Hat Fuse 7 is available for download by members of the Red Hat Developer community. Customers can get the latest updates from the Red Hat Customer Portal. Sign up today to get started with Fuse Online.

Visit the Red Hat booth at Gartner Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit, June 4-5, 2018, in London to learn more and view a demonstration of Fuse 7.

Supporting Quotes

Mike Piech, vice president and general manager, Middleware, Red Hat

“From the very beginning, Red Hat Fuse has been about simplifying integration across the extended enterprise and helping organizations compete and differentiate themselves. With Fuse 7, which includes Fuse Online, we are continuing to enhance and evolve the platform to meet the changing needs of today's businesses, building off of our strength in hybrid cloud and better serving both the technical and non-technical professionals involved in integration today.”

Osmar Alza, coordinator of migration control, Dirección Nacional de Migraciones de la República Argentina

"Data integration is critical to the National Migration Department's mission of effective threat prediction, and Red Hat Fuse plays a crucial role in this process. The Red Hat Fuse platform provides unified access to a complete view of a person for smarter, more efficient analysis, and supports flexible integration with internal and third-party data sources and APIs. We look forward to deploying Red Hat Fuse 7 and taking advantage of the new cloud-native integration and iPaaS capabilities, and we expect these capabilities will help us expand on our existing investments in Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and help us more effectively support our mission and priorities."

Saurabh Sharma, principal analyst and consultant, Ovum

"Red Hat simplifies what could otherwise be a cumbersome task—integrating disparate applications, services, devices and APIs across the extended enterprise—and enables its customers to achieve agile integration to their advantage instead. Red Hat’s new iPaaS solution fosters developer productivity and supports a wider range of user personas to ease the complexity of hybrid integration."