Red Hat Inc. announced last week Red Hat OpenShift4 on Kubernetes for enterprises — the first major release in over four years since OpenShift3. The 100% open-source company boasts over 1,000 customers now utilizing the Kubernetes platform. So what does this mean, and how are companies using OpenShift to transform their businesses — and even save lives?

“The way OpenShift 4 has come along for us is, us having the opportunity to learn, ‘What have all these customers been doing well, and what else do we need to do on the platform to make that experience a better one?'” said Ashesh Badani (pictured), senior vice president of cloud platforms at Red Hat. “We’ve seen wholesale, complete digital transformations underway with our customers.”

Badani spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during Red Hat Summit in Boston. They discussed OpenShift4 and how customers are using it in their digital transformations (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Using OpenShift to transform lives

As complete digital transformation sweeps across Red Hat’s customers, Badani has seen many ways customers use the Red Hat OpenShift platform to enable their digital innovations. One example is Deutsche Bank AG, which now runs thousands of containers and keeps moving its workload onto its new platform as a service, Fabric, which uses microservices and container capabilities of OpenShift. Volkswagen is a well-known car company that is building autonomous, self-driving sets of technologies on the platform.

But it goes beyond just changing companies, according to Badani. “What we’re seeing is not just what we thought we would only see in the beginning,” he said. “Which is … cloud-native apps, and digital apps, and so on — or modernize some existing apps and bring them on the platform. But also, technologies that are making a fundamental difference. And when I say fundamental difference, actually saving lives.”

A big example of this is HCA Healthcare, which is using artificial intelligence to find early indications of sepsis. They have been utilizing the OpenShift platform to help with early detection so that people can survive this often deadly infection — which is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S.

“The fact that they’ve been able to do this — and … they’re reporting they’ve already saved dozens of lives based on this — that’s when you know the things that you’re doing are making a real difference, making a real transformation,” Badani concluded. “Not just in an actual customers’ lives, but in users and people around the world.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit 2019. (* 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.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE