When IBM announced its intention to acquire Red Hat Inc. for $34 billion in 2018, it was widely viewed as a sign that the open-source train had finally arrived in the station. Less than three years later, open source has grown to encompass not only the station, but the train tracks and surrounding enterprise territory as far as the eye can see.

In March, Red Hat released its “State of Enterprise Open Source” report, which, not surprisingly, validated the technology’s widespread enterprise influence. The report found that 90% of IT leaders were using open-source products, primarily in infrastructure modernization, networking and application development.

Perhaps even more significant was that 79% of IT leaders expected their use of enterprise open-source software for emerging tech to increase over the next two years. Open source has emerged as technology’s innovation engine. It is against this backdrop of enterprise momentum for open source that Red Hat will hold its annual Red Hat Summit virtually in April.

“Now in its 17th year, Red Hat Summit continues to be the premier open-source technology event that brings together IT professionals from all across the globe for a fun, informative and interactive event focused on innovation, education and collaboration,” said Tim Yeaton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Red Hat. “This year will feature visionary industry-leading speakers, interactive demos, customer success stories, ask the expert sessions and maybe even exciting special guests.”

TheCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit 2021 will begin at 1 p.m. EDT on April 27 and will run through 6 p.m. PDT on April 28. The event will include interviews with Paul Cormier, president and chief executive officer of Red Hat; Chris Wright, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Red Hat; Stefanie Chiras, senior vice president and general manager, RHEL Business Unit at Red Hat; Matt Hicks, executive vice president, products and technologies at Red Hat; and Hillery Hunter, vice president and chief technology officer, IBM Cloud at IBM Corp. Topics discussed will include edge computing solutions, the future role of the open hybrid cloud and enterprise security. (* Disclosure below.)

Focus on hybrid strategy

Red Hat’s role in the adoption of open source has played a central role in hybrid cloud momentum. Hybrid was a key part of IBM’s strategy even before it acquired Red Hat, and it has remained a critical element in the company’s future growth.

Red Hat’s portable open-source software fits neatly with IBM’s focus on customers seeking to balance demands of the public cloud with on-premises infrastructure. This has also created a new role for chief information officers who must now become cloud operators as well.

Red Hat and IBM are addressing this new reality through partnerships such as the alliance with Amazon Web Services Inc. Cloud operators need tools, and in late March AWS and Red Hat announced general availability of Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, or ROSA, which offered a managed service to build at-scale containerized applications on AWS.

“The OpenShift platform is available as a managed service in mainstream public cloud environments, including AWS and Azure,” said Janakiram MSV, principal analyst at Janakiram & Associates, in an interview with SiliconANGLE. “So, customers have a consistent platform across the data center, private cloud, hybrid cloud and the public cloud.”

The new datacenter

Hybrid computing is also transforming the IT industry itself.  The hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming the new datacenter.

What this will look like going forward was recently summarized in an article for the Enterprisers Project, a collaborative effort between the Harvard Business Review and Red Hat. In a story published by tech writer Kevin Casey in January, a number of key hybrid cloud trends were identified for 2021. These included a reliance on hybrid as the “go-to” IT infrastructure model and matching the right workload to the right environment for running the business effectively.

“We’re finally getting past the notion that infrastructure choice is a bimodal decision – public or private cloud,” said Kim King, director of product marketing, cloud management at Snow Software, in the Enterprisers Project story. “This provides a huge opportunity for businesses who have embraced the hybrid cloud reality, and we expect to see more businesses take advantage of the strategic implications of a hybrid approach that balance costs, performance, security, compliance and governance requirements.”

Red Hat’s pursuit of partnerships to address IT needs for the hybrid cloud underscores another requirement for open source. Red Hat’s own surveys have repeatedly shown that the major pain point in open-source adoption continues to be support. It’s not just about having the right tools, it’s being able to use those across platforms without needing an advanced degree in software development.

In early April, when IBM announced general availability of its public cloud for banks and financial services organizations, the company prominently featured its support for Red Hat OpenShift as part of the offering, with built-in security and compliance controls for cloud native workloads.

There are also a number of customer use cases where businesses have drawn from Red Hat’s offerings to simplify IT management. Microsoft Corp. uses Red Hat’s Ansible Automation Platform to reduce routine, repeatable tasks and complexity. The Mizuho Financial Group, one of three megabanks in Japan, also relies on Ansible to automate its IT infrastructure configuration management.

“Hybrid cloud is transforming into cloud native,” Janakiram noted. “Anthos, Tanzu and Azure Arc are some examples and Red Hat and IBM are well-positioned to exploit this trend.”

The open edge

Having the right tools and support will be key ingredients for Red Hat and its customers, with an increased focus on computing at the edge. Red Hat is shaping its edge strategy based on two basic premises: Edge does not exist without the hybrid cloud, and the foundation of edge computing must be open or it will fail.

Red Hat has been lining up its edge offerings over the past year. In August, it announced 3-node cluster support for OpenShift to integrate Kubernetes at the network edge with a smaller footprint. In November, Red Hat introduced new capabilities for RHEL and OpenShift designed to facilitate edge computing in hybrid cloud deployments. The moves were recognition that edge environments will be varied and spread everywhere and hybrid means being able to adapt.

“If there is any remaining argument that hybrid or multicloud is a reality, the growth of edge solidifies this truth,” said Stu Miniman, director of insights on the Red Hat cloud platforms team, in a recent article. “When we think about where data and applications live, they will be in many places.”

Red Hat has also taken recent steps to ensure open-source viability and collaboration at the edge. The firm announced a partnership with NEC in early April to develop joint open-source software functions with a focus on 5G applications at the edge.

Red Hat’s approach to the edge is very much tied to its open-source roots. The company fervently believes that success in this area is closely linked with the fortunes of hybrid and the open-source community.

“If edge computing is going to be a realistic future for enterprise IT, it needs the hybrid cloud and open source to thrive,” said Red Hat CEO Cormier.

Livestream of Red Hat Summit

Red Hat Summit is a livestream event, with additional interviews to be broadcasted on theCUBE. You can register on the event’s website for free here to access the live event. Plus, you can watch theCUBE interviews here during the event and on demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch the live coverage of Red Hat Summit, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on SiliconANGLE.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

SiliconANGLE also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

Guests

Guests who will be interviewed on theCUBE during Red Hat Summit include Red Hat’s Paul Cormier, president and chief executive officer; Chris Wright, senior vice president and chief technology officer; Stefanie Chiras, senior VP and general manager of the RHEL Business Unit; Matt Hicks, executive VP of products and technologies; and Clayton Coleman, architect.

TheCUBE will also speak with Hillery Hunter, VP and CTO of IBM Cloud at IBM; Raymond Kok, senior VP of cloud application solutions at Siemens Digital Industries Software; Victor Korompis, senior VP of digital banking at PT Bank Mandiri; Bob Wise, GM of Kubernetes at Amazon Web Services Inc.; Peder Ulander, head of product marketing for enterprise, developer and open source at AWS; Mark Potts, managing director of the Accenture & IBM Red Hat Business Group at Accenture PLC; and Kevin Martelli, principal of software engineering at KPMG International Ltd.

Stay tuned for a complete list of speakers.

(* 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: Red Hat