A few years ago, Red Hat, Inc. and Cisco Systems, Inc. partnered with a vision of an application-centric infrastructure based on open-source platforms. One of the goals of the collaboration was to increase the adoption of OpenStack throughout the enterprise.

Radhesh Balakrishnan, GM of OpenStack at Red Hat, and  Lew Tucker, VP and CTO of cloud computing at Cisco Systems, sat down with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to provide their impressions of how OpenStack is impacting their business.

Global adoption of open source

When asked about the growth of OpenStack, Tucker commented, “It’s not a surprise. Five or six years ago, we saw an entire industry moving around the development of this kind of a platform for anybody to build cloud. We were very hopeful, but it has been a journey, but also a rewarding one … and as OpenStack is spreading around the world, we see OpenStack is the platform of choice. It’s been great to see that kind of adoption.”

Tucker also said that Cisco has seen all of its customers asking for open platforms and industry collaboration. He said that now customers want a common software implementation, and this request has had an affect on every part of Cisco’s business.

Partnership provides limitless boundaries  

“Our partnership has seen an amazing journey, specific to OpenStack in the last two to three years,” said Tucker. “Our partnership dates back to the Linux days as well, but at the same time, from an OpenStack perspective it’s rewarding to see that across multiple businesses within Cisco … we have an amazing partnership across engineering as well as go-to-market to make sure we are jointly pushing the boundaries of what OpenStack can do — as well as more customers benefit from the solutions.”

Update on Cisco’s Intercloud

With many of Cisco’s new business acquisitions, the company is seeing more management moving to the cloud. “Cisco’s Intercloud will be the place where we start to see more and more management of infrastructure,” Tucker said. “Whether it be on premise in an enterprise or if it’s a service provider, this kind of service delivery model for the cloud is very compelling.”

Modernize with less lock-in

The interview also covered the new directions Cisco is taking in the cloud along with the partnerships enabling customers to modernize their businesses with more reliability and less lock-in.

Tucker and Balakrishnan were both excited about progress made by the community, and they see pervasive adoption as the next step on the journey.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of OpenStack Summit — Austin. And make sure to weigh in during theCUBE’s live coverage at the event by joining in on CrowdChat.

Photo by SiliconANGLE