“The customer is always right.” This is a common mantra for anyone who’s worked in customer service. And Alessandro Perilli, general manager of management strategy at Red Hat, Inc., makes a point of studying what it is customers want and what they like. He sees three critical trends of what customers look for in a product.

The first is the ease of use. There is a big demand for simplicity, or what Perilli calls being “frictionless.” The second is speed. The third is a demand for hybridity. This includes the need for modularity, composability and the ability to only use a specific feature within a product. It also means being able to use different products from different vendors, not necessarily just Red Hat.

“We are shaping the measurement portfolio after these trends and trends that come out of them,” Perilli told Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during Red Hat Summit in San Francisco, CA.

The possibility of a single pane of glass structure

The number one trend of being frictionless is what Perilli finds himself focusing on. His idea is that a portfolio should be bringing to customers a consistent, coherent “single pane of glass to manage the traditional application and new generation applications.”

Perilli acknowledged that this is an unpopular opinion, however, with many experts that he both respects and trusts claiming that such a thing is impossible. But he compared it to TV remotes and how he’s personally seen that if a friend has more than four, they often decide to buy a universal remote to simplify things and retaining consistency. “This is where I see the value. Not as a replacement, but as a way to manage them all,” summarized Perilli.

For an example, he encouraged interested parties to check out a Cox Automotive video that demonstrates how Cox Automotive implemented solutions, including Red Hat CloudForms, to drive on-time delivery of IT resources. This simplicity is what customers want, Perilli said, and he’s “very pleased to see industry moving in that direction.”.

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

Photo by SiliconANGLE