Day three of the OpenStack Summit brought an interesting conversation on open source cloud management to theCUBE. Joe Fitzgerald, the General Manager for Cloud Management at Red Hat, and the show’s co-hosts, John Furrier and Stu Miniman, discussed the company’s open source cloud management platform, ManageIQ.

Red Hat had earlier announced the formation of the ManageIQ community, which is an open source cloud management platform for OpenStack and other clouds. According to Fitzgerald, it is  “the first enterprise-grade open source cloud management platform.”

Responding to WSJ

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Commenting on The Wall Street Journal’s article about Red Hat choosing not to support a rival version of OpenStack, Fitzgerald said, “We take support really seriously. It’s irresponsible to claim support and be unable to back it up. Red Hat takes that very serious.”

Interoperability and support for other platforms is an important focus for ManageIQ very important, and “support and certification are not a marketing activity. It’s a technical activity,” Fitzgerald added.

“A lot of the OS vendors have their proprietary offering,” Fitzgerald went on. “Red Hat is all open, so our storage, our Linux, our OpenStack, our management, our past — everything is open.”

On open sourcing ManageIQ – why now?

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Asked why the open source version of ManageIQ was released now, Fitzgerald said the platform was proprietary, and acquired by Red Hat 18 months ago.

“We’ve open sourced this cloud management platform. Open source is everything. Red Hat does everything in the open. There is no proprietary code anywhere in Red Hat, unless it’s a recent acquisition and we’re on the way to open-sourcing it.”

ManageIQ founded in 2006, and already on its fifth version when Red Hat acquired the company. There have been two major versions released since then.

“This is not a new technology,” Fitzgerald explaining, noting its support for multiple virtual platforms, offering a “very mature set of technologies.”

“I really don’t think there’s been a mature open source cloud management platform before,” Fitzgerald said. The platform has already been used for global deployments across continents, in different verticals, financial services, pharma, technology etc.

“We want a robust community,” a big user participation in the community, “they will keep us honest about we need to go.”

OpenStack coming of age

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Commenting on the event, Fitzgerald said he “feels like OpenStack has come of age at this show,” based on the attendance of analysts, and the experiences showcased on stage.

Asked how enterprises evaluate the cloud, Fitzgerald said “the cloud has so much confusion in architecture” that they want a trusted adviser to choose a solution that fits. Red Hat helps customers determine where they are, where they want to go, and support them on their journey.

“A lot of technologies start by trying to get it working. With OpenStack, cloud technology works,” Fitzgerald said. “The next step is to manage it. The fact that management is the topic now is a sign it’s come of age.”

Asked what workloads were best suited for the hybrid cloud, Fitzgerald said “what we’re seeing is that people will end up with a combination of traditional workloads and cloud workloads. They will still want to use cloud for trad workloads,” but the things that work best on cloud are the new applications, mobile, social, those that work in real time, he explained. The traditional system of record workloads will stay on the private clouds.

“The pain point for hybrid is complexity,” Fitzgerald said. “People are looking for simplicity. Complexity increases costs.” People are trying to reduce complexity, get to a unified view of the world and reduce the number of vendors they work with. “The number one driver for the cloud is agility,” he went on, saying anything slowing it down is not beneficial.

Commenting on the future of OpenStack, Fitzgerald said “we’re at the peak of the hype cycle. It’s going to settle down. It has high value, it’s here to stay.”

Asked why is this point in time so important for modernizing IT, Fitzgerald said: “I think the physics have changed. Cloud is real,” users are are trying new things. “It’s the age of open. That’s where all the innovation happens.”