As open-source continues finding its place in the tier-one world of technology, open-source institutions that have been around since the days of being considered upstarts and rebels are bringing their wealth of experience to the table in new ways.

At the KubeCon 2016 event in Seattle, WA, Chris Wright, VP and chief technologist, Office of Technology, at Red Hat Inc., joined John Furrier (@furrier), co-host of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to talk about the expanding market for containers, challenges in the markeet, the search for real change and what really matters to Red Hat customers.

Reality checks

To get things started, Wright laid out the basics of how Red Hat’s customers are reacting to the rise in containers, with Kubernetes, the open-source container cluster management software project by Google, being the main point of focus. As he explained, Red Hat sees its customer base as “an enterprise customer base, so making something accessible to the enterprise is a huge part of what we’re doing.”

As they maneuver past the usual roadblocks of introducing a new technology, Red Hat is placing emphasis on making the new advantages accessible without forcing customers to abandon their existing IT investments in infrastructure and applications.

And as Wright acknowledged, the hype around new tech developments can easily obscure the actual level of value to be had from those emerging technologies. “We’re always paying attention to the hype-cycle. … We want to make sure we’re investing in real technology,” he shared, emphasizing the need for both genuine technical and community realities to support the excitement.

Customer wants

“Kubernetes, from a technology point of view, is an awesome way to manage applications at scale across a distributed set of infrastructure,” Wright said, before moving on to examine ways in which Red Hat customers are looking to reach that level of scalability without locking themselves into platform dependencies. He noted that for many, being able to move from platform to platform “without having to fundamentally change your process and your development methodologies” is the big goal.

Wright also sees the adoption rate for containers accelerating, though he noted challenges of performance, scalability, stability, and orchestration integrations. “It’s really kind of all the basic things you need in your IT group, those are top concerns for the CIOs and IT leaders,” he said.

Coming together

And as Wright looked at the links between executives and IT workers, he saw opportunities for businesses to improve their fundamental methods of operation, with accelerated development cycles made possible through “narrow focus and a cross-functional team.”

“The cool thing for us is this container movement and container orchestration platform’s the first time in the industry where really different layers in the stack come together,” Wright said. “So we’re appealing to the operations teams, as well as the developer teams, because we’re providing a platform that allows a developer to move quickly. … So it’s sort of a seamless experience moving from a traditional environment to this cloud-native environment.”

But as Red Hat continues developing and drawing new customers, Wright shared that it has no intention of letting itself become complacent, noting his own saying within the company: “Disrupt yourself or be disrupted.”

*Disclosure: The Linux Foundation and other companies sponsor some KubeCon 2016 segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither The Linux Foundation nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of KubeCon 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE