Cisco Boosts IT Productivity, Cutting Deployment Time from Months to Minutes
About
Cisco leveraged Red Hat OpenShift, a powerful Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) solution, to build its Lightweight Application Environment (LAE). This transformation enabled a self-service portal for developers, streamlining IT resource provisioning and accelerating application deployment across hundreds of business-critical applications. The solution drives significant improvements in developer productivity and innovation velocity for the technology giant.
The Challenge
What went wrong
Cisco, a leading network solutions provider, faced the critical challenge of rapidly delivering innovative IT products and solutions to meet evolving customer demands. The existing process for project configuration was cumbersome, leading to delays that could span up to three months. This extended waiting period risked impacting developer engagement and overall productivity for its 1,000+ developers, hindering time-to-market for new offerings and ultimately affecting customer satisfaction. Cisco needed to empower its IT team to innovate faster and more efficiently.
Solution Approach
How it was solved
Cisco collaborated with Red Hat Business Consulting to design and implement a Lightweight Application Environment (LAE) built on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. This Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) deployment was engineered to support hundreds of applications across various business functions. The core of the solution was a self-service portal, functioning as a 'one-stop shopping catalog' where developers could instantly provision the IT resources needed for application development. This eliminated manual deployment complexities and allowed developers to focus on strategic initiatives. The solution leveraged other key technologies including Red Hat OpenStack Platform, Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, Cisco UCS servers, Cisco network equipment, and NetApp storage.
Results Achieved
Success Metrics
The implementation of the LAE on Red Hat OpenShift yielded dramatic improvements across Cisco's IT operations. Project configuration and resource provisioning times, which previously took up to three months, were drastically reduced to mere minutes. This enabled faster innovation and significantly increased developer productivity. As Sudha Agrahara, Cisco IT Manager, stated, 'Developers get the services they need with just a click of a button, delivered in minutes.' The self-service model also fostered greater employee satisfaction by empowering developers to focus on creative, strategic projects rather than waiting for IT resources. This efficiency gain translated directly into a quicker time-to-market for innovative products and services, affirming the strategic partnership with Red Hat.
Verified Testimonials
Real voices from people who witnessed this story firsthand
Michael White
👔 I.T. Architect
🏢 Cisco
Cisco's success is inseparable from partners like Red Hat, who possess strategic vision, forward-thinking ideas, and development goals that perfectly align with ours. We are very fortunate to have established a partnership with Red Hat.
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