It turns out that casual Internet users aren’t the only ones to benefit from open-source technology. Companies like IBM are using open-source to innovate faster than ever before.

“Open source allows you to take advantage of innovation with less risk,” explained Derek Schoettle, general manager of Analytics Platform & Cloud Data Services at IBM. Schoettle talked with John Walls and George Gilbert (@ggilbert41), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the Apache Spark Maker Community event in San Francisco.

The first enterprise app

While many companies are now realizing the benefits of open source, Schoettle said it wasn’t always that way. Ten or 15 years ago, IBM’s move to adopt open source was met with resistance. But believers slowly started to trickle in: Open-source technology like Apache Spark provides IBM with what Schoettle described as “the first killer enterprise app.”

“We’re shifting from proprietary products to a platform approach where the cloud delivery model has provided partners for IBM,” said Schoettle. “Data is changing the way we work.”

Data is becoming more and more of a team sport, something team members can share among their peers in real time, according to Schoettle. And there’s a lot in the works for IBM. Schoetle said he’s working with a credit card company that has 6,000 employees interacting with consumers about credit card information. Right now it’s an exchange of information that generally takes about two days. But Schoettle has high hopes for consolidating these interactions: “We’re hoping to have that same information exchange take place in under minute,” he explained.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Apache Spark Maker Community 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE