It has been approximately two years since IBM finalized its acquisition of Red Hat Inc. for $34 billion, and the Red Hat Summit in April offered an opportunity to assess the state of the open-source world and the key projects brought about by the marriage of two key enterprise computing powers.

The two-day virtual event was covered extensively by theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, which conducted nearly 20 interviews with Red Hat and IBM executives, customers and partners as part of this year’s online gathering.

While numerous stories published by SiliconANGLE covered much of the discussion, here is a closer look at five additional insights you may have missed from Red Hat Summit 2021. (* Disclosure below.)

1. Red Hat envisions edge computing on a fully open platform, but there are no guarantees.

The global edge computing market is expected to reach compound annual growth of over 37% between 2020 and 2027, rising from $3.5 billion to over $43 billion in that timeframe. By any standard, that is phenomenal growth. It is also why there is a growing chorus of voices calling for edge standards within an open-source ecosystem to protect against silos, incompatibilities and cumbersome proprietary edge technology.

There are encouraging signs that enterprise open-source is already becoming prevalent in the edge computing landscape. Red Hat’s 2021 “State of Enterprise Open-Source Report” found that usage was highest in edge computing and internet of things use cases with 55% adoption, and that number is expected to grow to 72% over the next two years.

In addition, there are several high-profile open-source projects underway that seek to bring enhanced solutions to the edge space, including LF Edge, FIWARE, ioFog and KubeEdge. However, there is also concern within the IT community that the involvement of large tech players in edge technologies could diminish trust and confidence in the open-source world to provide workable standards and solutions. A recent study by SUSE found that 76% of respondents saw the influence of major technology firms as a threat.

“We firmly believe edge absolutely has to be built on an open platform,” said Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president and general manager of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Business Unit, during a Summit interview with SiliconANGLE. “The ecosystem around edge is complex. You have multiple hardware capabilities, multiple vendors; any edge deployment will be multi-vendor. It is about having that foundation be open and accessible and built upon by everyone.”

2. Open source offers hope for protection against software supply chain compromise.

Supply chain security was considered a back-burner issue until the SolarWinds attack in 2020. Now it is the subject of a presidential Executive Order and legislation by the U.S. Congress.

Sigstore, an open-source initiative under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, offers a way to improve software supply chain security by enabling developers to use cryptographic signing during the development process. It was founded by engineers from Red Hat, Google LLC and Purdue University.

Release files, binaries, manifests and container images can be securely signed and stored in an immutable public log. By digitally signing open-source software, sigstore aims to provide users with a measure of confidence they are dealing with code from a trusted source.

The concept of using free signing tools to protect elements of the online world was captured years ago by Let’s Encrypt, an open and automated certificate authority that encrypts communication between web servers and users. Let’s Encrypt currently provides TLS certificates to more than 260 million websites.

“A good way to frame sigstore is to think of Let’s Encrypt,” said Luke Hinds, senior software engineer at Red Hat, during an interview with theCUBE. “And what Let’s Encrypt did for website encryption is what we plan to do for software signing and transparency.”

3. Collaboration between AWS and Red Hat creates a new tool for cloud management within Kubernetes.

Given the popularity of Kubernetes within the enterprise, developers can always use new tools to enhance container orchestration capabilities. The good news is that Amazon Web Services Inc. and Red Hat have partnered on an open-source project that makes it easier to build scalable Kubernetes applications without having to define resources or run supporting services inside or outside a cluster.

The project is AWS Controllers for Kubernetes, or ACK. ACK got its start through the work of an AWS partner solutions architect in 2018 and it has morphed into a way for companies using Kubernetes to describe applications, and the AWS services those depend on, in one standard format.

AWS plans to integrate ACK as part of general availability for Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, or ROSA, which streamlines the process for Red Hat customers to build and manage containerized applications on AWS.

“AWS works on Kubernetes projects upstream, as does Red Hat, and one of those projects is a new one called ACK,” said Bob Wise, general manager for Kubernetes for AWS, in a recent CUBE interview. “This is a kind of Kubernetes-friendly way for my customers to use an API and manage AWS services.”

4. The chief information officer is now a cloud operator.

Chief information officers running compute operations are quickly discovering that they must not only know how to build for cloud, but they must also understand how to manage the cloud at scale.

This shift in the role of the CIO was recently summarized in an April blog post by Red Hat Chief Executive Officer Paul Cormier, who outlined how IT executives were now responsible for managing thousands of workloads across multiple environments. It is a microcosm of the work performed by hyperscalers.

The rise of edge computing, 5G platforms, and increased dependence on AI and machine learning for processing data will require that CIOs leverage a common foundation to span a diverse environment. Red Hat sees this foundation as Linux, providing the linkages needed in an open ecosystem.

“They certainly do need to think like an operator,” said Darrell Jordan-Smith, senior vice president of industries and global accounts at Red Hat, in a discussion with theCUBE. “CIOs need to look at how they automate a lot of these functions, because they’re actually deployed in many different places all at the same time. They have to live independently of each other, that’s what cloud native really is.”

5. Collaborative medical imaging program in Massachusetts grows into important pandemic resource.

It is easy to become enthralled with the speeds and feeds of tech innovation, but sometimes the real world intervenes with a reminder of the priorities in life. The global pandemic, which affected most of the world in 2020 and has continued well into 2021, was one such example.

It didn’t garner tremendous press coverage when Red Hat announced a collaboration with Boston Children’s Hospital to deploy the ChRIS Research Integration System in 2018. Yet, the initiative that leverages a web-based medical imaging platform on the Mass Open Cloud suddenly became an important resource in helping to diagnose COVID infections on lung images.

As reported by Red Hat in November, the collaboration has progressed rapidly and experienced growth in new use cases. The ChRIS platform has helped deploy additional projects that quickly sprang up last year to deal with the rapidly spreading virus, including COVID-net, which provides a rapid and reliable screening of lung X-rays to assess the likelihood of viral infection.

“This is an opportunity for multi-disciplinary work, looking at modeling for healthcare and how you can improve imaging,” said Chris Wright, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Red Hat, during a Summit interview with theCUBE. “We’ve had great results in this collaboration, and these things come together in part through connecting relationships to academia, where academia’s research is increasingly built in, on and around open-source software. We see academia and open source coming together to build a next generation understanding of the scientific endeavor.”

(* 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.)

Image: Red Hat