The ubiquity of the Kubernetes container deployment platform in virtualization computing environments is due in large part to its functionality, but the open source system is also serving enterprises transforming their businesses through its educational community.

“One of the important things about Kubernetes is that … it’s a community of equals contributing to the project. It’s about each company bringing the right thing for the project, not the right thing necessarily just for that company,” said Joe Brockmeier (pictured, left), senior evangelist, Linux containers, at Red Hat Inc.

The exchange of innovation supported by Kubernetes and its partners is driving the rapid growth of cloud computing through systems like OpenShift, Red Hat’s container-based software deployment platform.

Brockmeier and Kimberly Craven (pictured, right), strategic product and solutions marketing executive at Red Hat, spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event in Austin, Texas. They discussed the evolution of enterprise through the lens of digital transformation and how Red Hat is nurturing the Kubernetes community to enable growth. (* Disclosure below.)

A catalyst for change in the community

Part of Red Hat’s corporate mission is to be the catalyst for change in communities. It’s that culture that drives the company to go beyond working one-on-one with customers and generate new innovation for the market at large through initiatives like their open-source community OpenShift Commons.

“Our customers are providing feedback to us directly in OpenShift Commons. …  They’re not just telling us ‘This works, this doesn’t work’; they’re telling each other and sharing successes, which is part of the wonder of an open-sourcing community,” Brockmeier said. These customer conversations allow Red Hat to steer the community and more effectively meet its changing needs.

This collaborative approach has proven successful for Red Hat as it works to support customers at every level of virtualization. “There are a lot of companies out there that are … still digesting cloud, private or public. One of our key roles is to help them consume open-source software and get them from point A to point B,” Craven said.

Red Hat helps direct customers in how to allocate workloads at the beginning of their cloud journeys and works to create additional functionality in the community for enterprises innovating at the next level. “It’s all about getting to be … where you can migrate your workloads to the cloud but also develop on the cloud much more quickly than you could before. … That’s the end goal for adopting containers and … Kubernetes,” she said.

The company is currently conducting a research initiative to further its understanding of customer needs and expand community efficacy. “What we’re finding is financial services, the media, communications organizations, government and even healthcare to some extent are taking a look at adopting,” Craven said.

Craven attributes Red Hat’s dedication to customer development and the success of the market overall to its culture of innovation. “There are a lot of smart people that work at Red Hat, and it’s a very collaborative culture. … Everyone is very passionate about all these changes that are happening,” she concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event. (* Disclosure: Red Hat Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Red Hat nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE