With the proliferation of open-source adoption, some formerly unlikely alliances are being forged, and the end-users are reaping the benefits from the changing times.

Harry Mower, senior director of Developer Programs at Red Hat, Inc., and Todd Mancini, senior principal product manager of Developer Tools at Red Hat, sat down with Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at this year’s Red Hat Summit in San Francisco, with the conversation open to questions about Red Hat’s latest announcements, developments and future plans.

Tools and refinements

As Mower pointed out, this was a big year and conference for Red Hat, with “one of the largest single-day announcements we’ve ever had” and “a number of announcements around technologies that we’ve been committed to for many years.”

Among these announcements were a new application of Enterprise Java and the announcement of new products, including the Red Hat Developer Suite, which Mancini explained as a utility suite that “takes all of our other developer tools and puts them in one package, so you can install it super-easy [and which features integration of the tools with each other].”

Open-source meets Microsoft

“We’re the first Linux provider to have a fully supported version of .NET,” Mower noted, which is just one of the ways in which Red Hat and Microsoft are coming together for mutually beneficial developments.

The team also highlighted Red Hat’s forming of “universal workspaces,” intended to aid developers by removing much of the transitional hassle. “So not only can you start coding, but you have a full environment in which to code [with access to the full stack],” Mancini explained.

“Moving to this new technology removes almost all of the frustration in [iteration],” Mower added.

Another point of cooperation shared by Mower was the creation of a flexible language server protocol so that languages being used for app development can be plugged into Red Hat and Microsoft’s tools interchangeably. As Mancini clarified, though, the aim here was not to make the tools themselves interchangeable: “It’s not about making it be consistent; it’s about having that choice. … The idea here is that you get to choose your tool that works the way you want.”

Development and progress

From there, the duo moved on to address different types of deployment strategies, including the “canary deploy,” which shares updates with only a portion of the audience, to test for problems and conflicts, before doing a full deployment, as Mower outlined. Also emphasized was the work Red Hat is doing to optimize the consistency of developing environments throughout the steps of that process.

Looking at the reception Red Hat had received at the conference so far, Mancini felt that the announcement of the company’s open Java Development Kit on Windows had received a big response from the audience.

For Mower’s part, he wanted to put focus on Red Hat’s ability to serve as a bridge for interested companies. “I think the big message that we’re trying to give developers this week is that we’re really committed to the environments you use today … but we’re also looking to bring you into the future,” he said.

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

Photo by SiliconANGLE