Infineon Technology AG uses Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus

Infineon turned to Red Hat® Services, Red Hat Technical Account Management (TAM) and Red Hat Training. The company switched to a container environment for the internal development of specialized tools used in semiconductor development and production. Red Hat helped Infineon speed up and simplify processes while keeping information safe.

Founded and headquartered in Germany, Infineon Technologies AG is a global
semiconductor leader in power systems and IoT. Infineon drives decarbonization and
digitalization with its products and solutions. The company has around 56,200 employees
worldwide and generated revenue of about €14.2 billion in the 2022 fiscal year (ending 30
September). While further expanding the manufacturing capacities and continuing to grow
in terms of revenue, it needed to ensure the performance and security of its processes.
The company decided to switch to a container environment for the internal development
of dedicated tools used in semiconductor development and production. Thanks to the
enterprise-supported technologies and hands-on guidance from its Training and Technical
Account Management programs, Red Hat proved to be a great partner to help Infineon
speed up and simplify processes, while keeping proprietary information safe.

Addressing secure development within a growing company
As one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers worldwide, Infineon must remain agile,
particularly since it is dedicated to sustainability of both its solutions and carbon footprint.
With operations growing, the company needed a scalable cloud-native infrastructure to enable
digitalization while supporting its mission to make life easier, safer, and greener.
The company needed a standardized hybrid cloud platform for custom application development
and custom off-the-shelf applications. “The lead time for new applications from first discussions
to going live was too long,” said Hansjörg Sonnleitner, Senior Vice President Operational Services.
“We wanted rapid prototyping and a safe testing playground in which we could test code and then
scrap it.”

Working with the best
“We rely on best-in-class processes and products to serve our customers in the best way possible,”
Sonnleitner explained. “Our partners must have a proven competence and be able to design and
deliver strong and trustworthy solutions.”
Infineon had already implemented Red Hat Enterprise Linux on bare metal as its Operating
System Platform for the internal High Performance Compute Clusters enabling semiconductor
development and production. “When we learned that Red Hat has a container platform, we decided
to implement it which, in short, was a success,” said Sonnleitner. The evolution of the OpenShift
environment encouraged Infineon to switch to Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus for a unified set
of services, principally its centralized advanced cluster security capabilities.
To encourage learning and ensure best practices, Infineon took advantage of Red Hat Services,
Red Hat Technical Account Management (TAM) and Red Hat Training.

Creating a scalable and secure solution that saves time and effort

Created state-of-the-art scalable infrastructure that can extend in minutes
With Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, Infineon now has a state-of-the-art cloud-native
infrastructure that supports its scaling business model. This new setup allows Infineon to scale its
infrastructure in minutes instead of hours, days, or even weeks. What’s more, operational complexity
has significantly decreased, which allows the company to focus on the continuous innovation of
technologies and staying ahead of the competition.

Accelerated processes resulting in faster time-to-market
Infineon can now deploy applications much faster and perform rapid prototyping and code testing.
“The new environment allows seven times faster deployments and is twice as efficient compared to
our standard environment,” said Sonnleitner. “Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus simplifies a lot since
you don’t have to interoperate with so many other systems from a traditional environment. An idea
can be brought to market faster. Another plus: our software developers and application owners can
now work even more efficiently.” 

Increased security of intellectual property
Infineon’s intellectual property remains secure because the company can keep prototyping
platforms on-premises. “We need a very strong system, application, and software security,
and we have clear compliance guidelines on those,” said Sonnleitner.
Included in Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security offers Infineon
the required built-in Kubernetes-native security, providing multi-cluster governance through the
entire application life cycle.
“With its advanced security capabilities, this platform enabled us to see the vulnerabilities in the
configuration and application. And now, in DevOps, we can keep applications secure,”
said Sonnleitner.

Focusing on sustainability
Infineon has a keen drive to achieve sustainability in terms of technology solutions, employees,
and the impact of its manufacturing operations on the environment. Thus, Infineon is looking at how
to align the company operations with its sustainability goals.
“One part of our mission is to make life greener, and the new solutions can contribute to this effort
through efficiency gains,” said Sonnleitner. “We need to reduce our carbon footprint and the
containers in our data centers are contributing to achieve this goal.”
The company’s focus also includes the knowledge and skills journey around the new platform.
The company has already delivered internal training to 1,000 employees and will offer further
workshops and hands-on courses.
Infineon wants to keep building on existing successes, having internal customers share best
practices, and creating a closer link between ideas and progress across the organization in a secure
and managed platform. The company thus has established a large community for best practice
sharing on a broad range of different topics around OpenShift. Some forums already have close
to 400 members.
“It is great to have Red Hat on our side to build on best practices in the area of cloud solutions,
boosting us at Infineon to become a truly best-in-class digital company,” said Sonnleitner.

About Infineon
Infineon Technologies AG is a global semiconductor leader in power systems and IoT. Infineon drives
decarbonization and digitalization with its products and solutions. The company has around 56,200
employees worldwide and generated revenue of about €14.2 billion in the 2022 fiscal year (ending 30
September). Infineon is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (ticker symbol: IFX) and in the USA
on the OTCQX International over-the-counter market (ticker symbol: IFNNY)

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