Even though there have been no major changes announced to the OpenStack platform of late, it was still one of the most talked about subjects at this year’s Red Hat Summit. Red Hat plays a significant role in the development of the platform and is very proud of its contribution to the community.

Radhesh Balakrishnan, GM of OpenStack at Red Hat, Inc., sat down with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at the Red Hat Summit that took place in San Francisco to discuss Red Hat’s contribution to the OpenStack platform and community.

At the ready: Enabling customers to have what they need when they need it

While some customers clearly know what flavor of programmable infrastructure they want and need, others may not be so certain. Some may want a complete OpenStack cloud solution rolled out and delivered so they can begin using it on their own right away, while other customers may prefer to go the managed services route. Red Hat partners with a wide array of vendors, which allows them to stand ready to support whatever OpenStack path the customer chooses to take.

“So depending on the customer’s preference for whether they want to do it on their own or have somebody manage, we are step by step enabling all the options for the customers,” said Balakrishnan.

Coming soon: OpenStack Newton

The OpenStack platform is updated and released in cycles of approximately six months. Balakrishnan’s team is responsible for the Red Hat contribution to the community. With the Newton release, which is scheduled for October of this year, he said to expect some big changes to the development cycle of the product.

“Today we take anywhere from two to three months from upstream release to deliver our product,” explained Balakrishnan. “With Newton release, instead of serialize it, we’re going to parallel-ize [sic] it so that within four weeks of upstream release we’re going to have our product. And we’re going to keep that drumbeat moving forward.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Red Hat Summit.

Photo by SiliconANGLE