As the enterprise moves toward its digital transformation, OpenStack is becoming a key player in the arena of hybrid cloud. The changes in open-source software and the growth of OpenStack has enabled the enterprise to develop a dynamic infrastructure that will help them migrate workloads to and from the cloud, working with on-premise and with legacy systems.

Tim Yeaton, SVP of the Infrastructure Business Group at Red Hat, Inc., and Radhesh Balakrishnan, GM of OpenStack at Red Hat, joined Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at the OpenStack Summit, in Austin TX, to talk about the customer demands in the OpenStack environment.

The growth of OpenStack

Miniman noted the growth right away by recalling that the summit used to be just 75 people sitting around discussing the platform. Today’s attendance is over 7,500 people, including vendors and customers.

“It’s almost a metaphor for what’s happened in the market over the years,” Yeaton commented. He shared that now thousands of customers using OpenStack are deploying their workloads at scale.

When asked about monetizing OpenStack, Balakrishnan explained that there are two levels that OpenStack is now delivering on, standard distribution and standard APIs. “Customers are now realizing that OpenStack is a destination they want to get to,” he said. “And we are blessed with having a broad portfolio with storage to cloud management to platform offering.”

Verizon’s big move

Balakrishnan felt that OpenStack has become more agile and flexible in its distribution, remarking, “It’s all about use cases. Eighteen months ago, I don’t believe we were talking about NVF [Network Functions Virtualization] or telco, and now Verizon is the largest deployment customer from an NVF perspective. … Any which way you look at it from customer adoption, partner momentum and community growth, it’s been a phenomenal journey.”

Hat’s off to hybrid

The interview continued with discussion about OpenStack’s key role in the private cloud infrastructure and how Red Hat is focusing its portfolio on a hybrid experience, which includes legacy investments and the ability to easily shift from on-prem to the cloud.

According to Yeaton, availability, predictive and real-time are going to be the continuing drivers in the industry, and he is confident that model is going to hold well.

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