Hybrid and multicloud technologies are here to stay, and already companies are working tirelessly to make sure their operations fit within this modern computing architecture. Both forms of cloud mashups are designed to give companies more control over containers’ virtualized methods for software deployments in today’s application-first world.

Helping to automate away the complexities of hybrid and multicloud management is Red Hat Inc.’s OpenShift enterprise-ready Kubernetes container platform, which has become especially attractive to the telecommunications industry, according to Pete Manca (pictured), senior vice president and general manager of converged infrastructure and solutions at Dell Technologies Inc.

Manca spoke with Stu Miniman (@Stu) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Red Hat Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. They discussed the partnership between Dell EMC and Red Hat, how the companies are planning to change the telecommunications industry, and why businesses find open-source solutions so attractive (see the full interview with transcript here). (*Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Walls: Let’s paint the umbrella a bit about the overall partnership between Dell EMC and Red Hat, how that’s evolved, and where it stands with all the new releases we’ve heard this week.

Manca: It’s been a great partnership for almost two decades now. Dell and Red Hat have been working together on a lot of different products from [Dell EMC] Ready Stack or Ready Architectures and Ready Nodes to software sales and support. It’s been a tremendous partnership for 20 years, and I expect it to be going for another 20 years.

Miniman: Walk us through the stacks a little bit. We understand Red Hat is an operating system with a long history of working on all the Dell platforms. You’ve got the converge environment. Where does Red Hat fit, and what pieces of their ever-broadening portfolio fit in?

Manca: Within the Ready Solutions environment, we work with Red Hat on OpenStack. And we deliver hardened, supported OpenStack products to both telco and enterprise markets. We also deliver OpenShift, a ready node and ready solution environment so we can deliver that container environment for those same enterprises and customers.

Walls: What is it specifically about telcos’ needs that makes them find open source so attractive, and what makes them stand apart from other industry sectors?

Manca: To me, its control and customization. So rather than taking a packaged app that’s shrink-wrapped and running it like everybody else, they want to get a customized control for their markets. They have certain standards and compliance that they must deal with. They also want to differentiate within that telco market, so it’s hard to do without having control around the underlying stack.

The solution from Red Hat combined with Dell’s is such an enterprise quality product for the telco market, which I think has certain advantages as well.

Miniman: You mentioned the Ready Solutions in OpenStack, and then on top of that, there could be OpenShift. How does that fit in with the solutions you’re offering?

Manca: We offer a Ready Solution for OpenShift as well, and we see that as the container solution for the markets that really want those open source-type products and have aligned themselves with Red Hat in Linux, so it’s a perfect solution for that.

We really see OpenShift as the ability to create a managed environment for containers. OpenShift provides a tremendous hybrid cloud experience for customers that want to migrate workloads, both on-premises to cloud and back, so we think that’s tremendous technology that will add value. And with our hardware technology underneath that, we can provide a stack that we think services the market well.

Miniman: We hear from customers, and it’s not, “The future is hybrid and multicloud.” They say that hybrid and multicloud are here today. VMware announced today that they’re supporting OpenShift on top of VMware. Can you explain where that fits into the overall discussion?

Manca: Dell is all about providing choices to customers, and we are the essential infrastructure company to the enterprise and commercial environments. So OpenShift on VMware is just another example of choice, and customers are going to have different application environments out there. They’re going to run some in containers, they’re going to run some in VM, and they’re going to run some native. We want to be the infrastructure provider for that. We want to work with partners like Red Hat to provide choice to our customers.

Watch the complete video interview below and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit 2019. (*Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Red Hat Summit. Neither Red Hat Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE