For the past century, organizations have devised similar processes for planning on a somewhat predictable future. This mode of thinking works fine in a static environment. However, as our world moves faster and becomes more ambiguous in the age of technology, companies and individuals must change and evolve to meet real-time demands.

“Planning as we know it is dead,” said Jim Whitehurst, president and chief executive officer of Red Hat Inc., who spoke during the morning keynote at today’s Red Hat Summit in Boston, Massachusetts.

Whitehurst gave an example of one of Red Hat’s transportation customers that complained Uber was disrupting the industry. That customer asked, “How do I organize for that?” But in a world that moves so quickly, plans are outdated before they are even completed, Whitehurst stated. So what’s the solution? He said open source provides a different model: “try, learn and modify.”

Organizations that work out how to do this at size and scale are the organizations that will be successful, Whitehurst stated.

As part of today’s morning keynote address, organizations told their stories of how open source has helped them innovate and reach the speed of operation necessary to succeed. Additionally, during the keynote, a demonstration was run on Red Hat OpenShift and AWS, demonstrating the power of Red Hat Inc. open source in the vast AWS ecosystem.

Governments use open source to save lives

The State of Jalisco in Mexico was seeking to improve the quality of life for its eight million citizens. Whether people wanted to improve health, find a better job, get a higher-quality education, or live in a safer location, Jalisco wanted to be able to help. They looked to Red Hat for open-source solutions.

“We’ve learned to tap the power of open-source technology to empower our citizens to take an active role in improving and impacting their communities,” said José Alfonso Fonseca Garcia, chief intelligence officer, State of Jalisco.

Government officials of the province of British Columbia in Canada feel they don’t have a monopoly on innovation, according to Peter Watkins, executive director, office of the chief intelligence officer, British Columbia.

“What if we could find a way to enable access to our backlog of unmet needs and the opportunity set that’s in the government but we don’t have the time to work on?” Watkins asked.

The government of B.C. wanted a better way to allow developers and tech entrepreneurs to access government data to build applications that could help everyone. With the help of Red Hat, government officials came up with the idea of a website, British Columbia Developer’s Exchange, which eliminates the wall between government and tech entrepreneurs.

As part of that initiative, developers have created the apps Open 511 and BC Highways. They both use geographic information from users’ phone plus mapping capabilities and government road camera information as a way for citizens to see if routes are open and safe for driving, no matter what the weather conditions.

In Singapore, a few thousand heart attacks occur every year in the island-nation, and the survival rate is low, according to Mark Lim Choon Lye, director of government digital services at the Government Technology Agency of Singapore. These attacks can strike anytime, anywhere, no matter what the age, gender or level of health of a person. The interesting thing about a heart attack is that quick intervention can exponentially increase the survival rate; every second counts, Lye added.

While many people have been trained in CPR/AED in Singapore, they are not always in the vicinity of someone who is in distress. Two years ago, the government of Singapore decided to do something about that. Using Red Hat technology, an app called myResponder was built to alert the nearest trained personnel that someone is having a heart attack and needed assistance.

“Technology is not our main objective at all; all we’re interested in is the people,” Lye stated. He said the app didn’t start out to save lives, but that’s exactly what happened.

Fostering and accelerating the speed of apps

To help foster and accelerate innovations, Red Hat’s Open Innovation Labs has a four-to-12-week residency for organizations, facilitating learning and collaboration. One of the recent Lab’s success stories centers on emergency room management.

“If I’m able to make reservations for a cinema or the hairdresser on my phone, I should be able to do the same for a physician appointment, even in an emergency,” said Dr. Dorothée Rhein Straub, co-founder of easiER AG, a startup focused on digital healthcare that is based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Originally, the idea was for just one app; but working with other organizations and having its ideas challenged and expanded, easiER AG actually came up with two apps: one for patients and one for hospitals.

“The Open Innovation Labs is a holistic approach to innovation,” said Dr. André Baumgart, co-founder of easiER AG. He said it doesn’t start with the technology; it starts with the business issue that needs to be resolved.

AWS is now on OpenShift, no matter where it resides

While Amazon Web Services and Red Hat have been partners for a decade, “With the pace of AWS continuing to accelerate, our customers want to be able to use [AWS’] innovation with REHL [Red Hat Enterprise Linux],” said Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of AWS, in a video presentation during the keynote.

To demo these new capabilities, Matt Yanchyshyn, technology partner solutions architect lead at AWS, joined Chris Morgan, product management director, OpenShift Ecosystem, at Red Hat, onstage in Boston to show how this works.

“This is the incredible power we have with hybrid cloud,” Morgan said.

Watch the complete keynote video below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Red Hat Summit 2017. (*Disclosure: Red Hat Inc. sponsors some Red Hat Summit segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Red Hat nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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