Open source solutions provider Red Hat on Monday announced a partnership with telecom major Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL) to transform its distributed network data centres to open standards, open interfaces based "Universal Cloud".

VIL will be rapidly transforming its over 100 data centres across a "Universal Cloud," where a shared software platform is capable of running multiple workloads -- network, IT and third party applications across its distributed Cloud locations. 

VIL said it now plans to extend this Universal Cloud as a platform to third-party workloads."

"Our collaboration with Red Hat has helped us deploy Universal Cloud based on open standards and systems," Vishant Vora, Chief Technology Officer, Vodafone Idea Limited, said in a statement.

"Effective working with various ecosystem stakeholders and rapid development cycles has enabled us to design efficient pods for widely distributed deployments running throughput intensive workloads," Vora said. 

Red Hat said its OpenStack Platform is enabling VIL to design efficient pods, which can be geographically distributed and taken closer to the end-users, helping to reduce latency and enable an optimal user experience. 

With Red Hat's open Application programming interface (APIs), VIL will be able to deliver actionable insights to its enterprise users, and help them potentially create a competitive advantage.

In collaboration with Red Hat, VIL plans to set up a DevOps team, to drive more consistent innovation and to help co-create new solutions and extend the platform to start-ups and developers. 

In addition, VIL will deploy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to automate workflows, and extend self-provisioning to VIL enterprise customers. 

"We're pleased to have helped VIL setup the distributed Cloud platform and further support it extending it to a broad range of customers, including small to medium-sized enterprises and start-ups," said Marshal Correia, Vice President and General Manager, Red Hat India.

"By adopting a more agile, DevOps-centered workflow based on Red Hat's open hybrid cloud technologies, VIL customers can more quickly adapt to changing market conditions," Correia said.