Seeing its highest Q1 growth rates in three years, Red Hat, Inc. is a powerhouse among the largest open-source software companies in the world. With resources and abilities of this magnitude, it is no small wonder that Red Hat is the keystone company in the push to bring the open source and enterprise communities together.

As theCUBE kicked off three days of wall-to-wall coverage of Red Hat Summit from the Moscone N & W in San Francisco, Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, began the day by discussing how Red Hat is being leveraged to bring open-source development to the enterprise on a grand scale.

Big opportunities for open source in enterprise

While most enterprise conferences are presently seeing very flat growth, Red Hat is seeing upwards of 20 percent in show attendance at the Red Hat Summit. The company is taking this as an indicator that there is heavy interest by enterprise developers in using an open-source platform to develop within the enterprise ecosystem.

“Red Hat is trying to capitalize on that by having contributors to these spaces so they’re not just picking up the technology and packaging it, but they are then making it simpler for companies,” explained Gracely.

Leading by example

Over the years, Red Hat has proven itself to be a solid performer as the open-source software developer. It has achieved this by not only focusing on profit, but also by putting a lot of effort into taking care of its customers. This balance is what has helped them become one of the world’s leading software companies that focuses exclusively on the open-source model.

“Everybody wants to be the Red Hat of whatever that next big thing is,” said Gracely.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’scoverage of the Red Hat Summit.

Photo by SiliconANGLE