Connections and collaboration lead to new thought patterns, ultimately driving innovation. In this iteration of the tech explosion, open source platforms connect innovators and provide a modern-day forum to advance existing systems and functions — and create new ones, such as the wildly popular container orchestration platform Kubernetes.

“We see new [software] engineers come in that compete on a world stage in open source, and the best are not necessarily from the background you would expect them from,” said Matt Hicks (pictured), executive vice president of products and technologies at Red Hat Inc. — and as of today, the new chief executive of the IBM Corp. company. “You have this potential in people, and open source is a great model for getting that out.”

Hicks spoke with industry analysts Dave Vellante and Paul Gillin during the Red Hat Summit event, an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed people-powered innovation, the growing opportunities for open source in regards to edge computing and the value of Red Hat’s booming ecosystem. (* Disclosure below.)

Open source and machine learning on the edge

The massive compute power at the edge is greater than ever. Combined with open source and machine learning platforms, the potential is exponential.

“I think we’re going to see these domains build differently where you have mass compute training-type capabilities, and then push that as close to the user as you can to make decisions that are more dynamic than traditional codes,” Hicks said.

As with any business, partnerships in sales, creation and solutions are huge factors for success. But as the technological ecosystem changes rapidly, there is no single model for finding collaborators.

“The challenge in technology is it shifts so quickly,” he said. “We’re starting to see the uptick of edge solutions having as much draw as public cloud. The partnership follows the innovation on those curves and finding the right model where that works for customers is the key thing for us.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Red Hat Summit event:

(* 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: SiliconANGLE