For Jim Whitehurst, becoming the chief executive of Red Hat Inc. in 2007 was like ordering a five-course meal and only receiving a couple of appetizers. He expected to find a customer list that represented the core global industries and biggest information technology consumers.

Instead, it was financial institutions, some phone companies and not much else.

“When I joined, our top customer list was great — all major banks and telcos,” Whitehurst described in a 2010 interview. “But where’s everybody else? Where are the big mainstream users of IT? That’s one of the key things that we worked on.”

Whitehurst, who is now president of IBM Corp., worked with his team over the next decade and established Red Hat as an enterprise powerhouse. Today, 50% of the top Fortune 100 companies are using Red Hat OpenShift as the Kubernetes platform of choice, including energy companies, hotel chains, transportation businesses, retailers and aerospace conglomerates.

It is a tale of success for Whitehurst, the open-source community and, so far, IBM, which bought Red Hat in 2018 for $34 billion. This will be the backdrop when Red Hat holds its virtual Red Hat Summit this week.

“This year will feature visionary industry-leading speakers, interactive demos, customer success stories, ask the expert sessions and maybe even exciting special guests,” said Tim Yeaton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Red Hat. “As it moves into its 17th year, Red Hat Summit continues to be the premier open-source technology event that brings together IT professionals from all across the globe for a fun, informative and interactive event focused on innovation, education and collaboration.”

TheCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit will begin at 1:00 p.m. EDT on April 27 and run through 6 p.m. EDT on April 28. The event will include interviews with Paul Cormier, president and chief executive officer of Red Hat; Chris Wright, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Red Hat; Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president and general manager, RHEL Business Unit, at Red Hat; Matt Hicks, executive vice president, products and technologies at Red Hat; and Hillery Hunter, vice president and chief technology officer, IBM Cloud at IBM Corp. Topics discussed will include edge computing solutions, the future role of the open hybrid cloud and enterprise security. (* Disclosure below.)

Containers fuel airline tech

One vertical that appears to have no reluctance in adopting Red Hat’s open-source Linux model is the airline industry. Prominent airline customers include Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., which designed and implemented a modern hybrid cloud IT model based on OpenShift, and airline maintenance provider Lufthansa Technik, which built a new hybrid platform using Red Hat’s open-source tools. In addition, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport leverages Red Hat’s solutions for customer facing services.

In February, IBM and Delta Airlines announced a multi-year agreement to migrate the air carrier’s applications to the cloud in anticipation of a post-pandemic rebound in travel this year and next. Delta’s new computing architecture will run on Red Hat’s OpenShift with a goal to enable a consistent environment across the airline’s public and private cloud operations. The airline’s chief technical officer has indicated that 90% of its applications and databases will be migrated to the public cloud by 2024.

“Red Hat is a unique player with investments in data center infrastructure, platforms, and the cloud,” said Janakiram MSV, principal analyst at Janakiram & Associates, in an interview with SiliconANGLE. “An enterprise can run Red Hat Virtualization based on KVM to run traditional VMs, OpenShift for containerized workloads, and manage both VMs and containers from a unified control plane. Developers and operators can follow the same workflow and processes irrespective of the target environment and this is a key differentiator for Red Hat.”

Activating the ecosystem

Red Hat’ role in the recent deal with Delta exemplifies how IBM plans to leverage its $34 billion purchase. IBM has marching orders from its newly appointed CEO – Arvind Krishna – to kick the OpenShift hybrid cloud and AI partner ecosystem into high gear on the sales front, according to an interview with IBM senior executive Bob Lord in January.

IBM’s and Red Hat’s focus for the remainder of this year will be on “activating the ecosystem,” according to Lord. That will mean accentuating OpenShift’s flexibility to run in multiple environments as an enticement for independent software vendors, building on the Red Hat platform in verticals such as retail, and leveraging the IT expertise of mid-tier partners.

The strategy already appears to be working. Rob Thomas, IBM’s senior vice president of cloud and data platform, recently indicated that the company was seeing an acceleration in partner engagement through its emphasis on Red Hat OpenShift’s multicloud software message.

IBM is building all of its software on top of OpenShift, according to Thomas, who called the strategy “a bet on open technology and innovation.”

Another important success story for Red Hat involves Turkcell İletişim Hizmetleri A.Ş., a leading converged telecommunication and technology services provider. The company has built its new artificial intelligence services architecture and application hub on OpenShift. The move has helped Turkcell transform customer experiences, drive operational efficiencies and bring consumer and business innovations to market faster.

Livestream of Red Hat Summit

Red Hat Summit is a livestream event, with additional interviews to be broadcasted on theCUBE. You can register on the event’s website for free here to access the live event. Plus, you can watch theCUBE interviews here during the event and on demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch the live coverage of Red Hat Summit, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during Red Hat Summit include Red Hat’s Paul Cormier, president and chief executive officer; Chris Wright, senior vice president and chief technology officer; Stefanie Chiras, senior VP and general manager of the RHEL Business Unit; Matt Hicks, executive VP of products and technologies; and Clayton Coleman, architect.

TheCUBE will also speak with Hillery Hunter, VP and CTO of IBM Cloud at IBM; Raymond Kok, senior VP of cloud application solutions at Siemens Digital Industries Software; Victor Korompis, senior VP of digital banking at PT Bank Mandiri; Bob Wise, GM of Kubernetes at Amazon Web Services Inc.; Peder Ulander, head of product marketing for enterprise, developer and open source at AWS; Mark Potts, managing director of the Accenture & IBM Red Hat Business Group at Accenture PLC; and Kevin Martelli, principal of software engineering at KPMG International Ltd.

Here’s a complete list of speakers.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Red Hat Summit. Neither Red Hat, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Red Hat