Automation is a red-hot topic across all industries and markets. As cloud becomes the de facto operating model, artificial intelligence is gaining traction throughout business operations. Rising in tandem with the trend for intelligent automation is Ansible, the open-source project that could.

“Five years ago when Red Hat acquired this little company called Ansible, they were basically selling to [information technology] admins in a particular space around config management,” said Joe Fitzgerald (pictured), vice president and general manager of management and automation at Red Hat Inc. Today, Ansible skills are in high-demand and Forrester Wave named the project a leader in infrastructure automation platforms for Q3 2020.

Offering a “sneak preview” into what to expect at the upcoming Red Hat AnsibleFest 2020, Fitzgerald spoke with Stu Miniman, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio from theCUBE’s Boston area studio. (* Disclosure below.)

Ansible automates OpenShift

Containerization is key as companies modernize into hybrid and multicloud environments, and many rely on Red Hat’s OpenShift Kubernetes platform for orchestration. As the environment becomes more complex, it has extended beyond the ability of human control.

“Even though people are modernizing their apps and running container-based apps, there’s a lot of other things that they need to be connected up to, [such as] traditional applications, other systems of record, your configuration management databases, your change management, things like that,” Fitzgerald stated. “So, there’s a lot of automation that has to happen around building, deploying [and] managing container-based apps in those environments.”

Breaking silos and enabling more productivity, not only for individual users but across the organization, is one of Ansible’s strengths. Over the years, the number of domains addressed by the platform has increased dramatically into network storage and cloud security. The number of people who use Ansible automation has also increased, and it is extremely popular with developers and a “favorite in tool chains around automation and config,” according to Fitzgerald.

Taking those capabilities and connecting them to the Kubernetes environment is “extremely powerful in so many ways,” according to Fitzgerald, because it allows Ansible to take over where the automation in Kubernetes ends and provide a connection to outside teams and technologies.

“I believe Ansible’s becoming sort of the de facto standard in automation, regardless of what domain, regardless of what persona. And I think AnsibleFest is going to show again why it is,” he said.

In keeping with Red Hat tradition, the full extent of the new Ansible capabilities around Kubernetes environments are due to be announced at AnsibleFest. But expansion around the Kubernetes edge environment will definitely be key.

“People that are already in the know that are using Ansible, wait till you see how you can use it for Kubernetes edge and really expand it beyond where you are today with it,” Fitzgerald stated.

Watch the complete video below, and be sure to check out theCUBE’s upcoming coverage of AnsibleFest 2020. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for AnsibleFest 2020. 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