Open-source technologies continue to have a huge impact on the world of information technology and software development, especially with the increasing use of machine learning and automation. Their role in the developing hybrid cloud is already having ripple effects on global security and innovation.

Red Hat Summit and AnsibleFest 2024 will bring together IT professionals, developers, customers and analysts to explore the future of hybrid cloud and open-source technology within Red Hat Inc.’s ecosystem. This is the second year that AnsibleFest will be held in the same place as the Summit, emphasizing how important automation is to Red Hat’s IT offerings.

“Automation plays a huge role for AI. In fact, we’ve seen automation actually play a key role just in bridging this sort of world of hybrid cloud,” Ashesh Badani, chief product officer at Red Hat, said in a Red Hat Summit preview interview with theCUBE Research principal analyst Rob Strechay. “There’s a huge amount of Ansible usage across our customer base. So being able to talk about that, being able to tie those together, talk about the opportunities for Ansible at the edge, specific use cases for Ansible, whether it’s networking or security, and then ultimately tying to AI.”

Red Hat’s role in the AI revolution and more will be a part of theCUBE’s coverage of the summit in Denver May 7-9. TheCUBE hosts Rebecca Knight and Rob Strechay will talk with industry experts about the ever-evolving landscape of IT and generative AI and discuss how Red Hat is impacting the multicloud ecosystem. (* Disclosure below.)

Here’s the complete video interview with Ashesh Badani:

Find out what’s in store for theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit 2024:

Supporting AI with automation

Red Hat’s parent company, IBM Corp., experienced more growth than expected over the fourth quarter of 2023, with software revenue rising 2% and Red Hat’s bookings by 17%, with the most growth from Red Hat Enterprise Linux, OpenShift and Ansible. Analysts note that AI is key to IBM’s growth, with enterprises investing in the company’s watsonx platform.

In November, IBM announced that it would integrate Ansible’s automation technology with watsonx for a smoother user experience.

“Bringing AnsibleFest and co-locating it with Summit really is key, because a lot of people, to get value out of AI, you really need to automate things and … really bring those playbooks so that you can do it in a repeatable manner,” Strechay said.

Red Hat announced new capabilities for OpenShift AI, its open source AI and machine learning platform, at last year’s summit and will hold sessions focused on its contributions to the AI space this year. Red Hat can serve the machine learning ops market by providing a consistent platform to deploy, run and fine tune different models, according to Badani.

“Take all the products that you already know, are familiar with, and then use that to run your AI model scale,” he said. “That’s the OpenShift AI, part of our portfolio we’ll talk about. But then we’re also infusing AI into our portfolio.”

Managing security in an open-source system

Red Hat is known for its ethos around open-source technology, and the company doesn’t plan on changing course, even as it looks to keep its platforms secure for users.

“Open source is a way of doing development,” said Chris Wright, chief technology officer of Red Hat, during last year’s conference. “It’s a big, distributed, resilient, organic model. As a result, growth is a fairly natural part of the open-source development model.”

As an open-source company, Red Hat is all about transparency and collaboration, according to theCUBE’s John Furrier. Open-source software has increased in popularity over the past few years, especially in relation to AI, but some are worried about security.

The European Union passed the Digital Operation Resilience Act in 2023, aimed at strengthening IT security in the financial sector, as well as regulations on AI. According to a Red Hat survey, 50% of respondents named security as one of their top three priorities. There are many questions to address when it comes to keeping users of open-source platforms protected, according to Badani.

“With regard to if [customers are] using software packages, what’s the source of them, what’s the provenance around them? Have those packets been signed appropriately? Can we make sure that as these binaries are being used, that they aren’t compromised in some way?” he asked. “There’ll be a series of sessions that will go through that in more detail.”

Pioneering edge computing in the hybrid cloud

Edge computing will be a big focus at this year’s conference as Red Hat looks to support a hybrid cloud and multicloud world. Powered by open-source solutions, Red Hat provides services at the edge through its Red Hat Device Edge platform.

“IBM could be that glue layer in the hybrid [cloud] that strings it together with Red Hat at the edge,” Furrier observed during the analysis of last year’s summit.

Serving customers at the edge will also be key for supporting AI and machine learning-based platforms, according to Strechay. The edge computing market is predicted to reach 32.19 billion by 2029.

“Edge is going to play a role from an AI perspective, because a lot of times … you can’t bring all the data back. You have to do inference and other things at the edge,” Strechay said.

Edge computing is crucial for many customers, including telephone companies, manufacturers and government organizations, Badani pointed out. He also highlighted that Ansible was key to managing multiple remote devices.

“Thinking about edge as an extension of our hybrid cloud, we think is an interesting value proposition,” he said.

“Cloud is really an operating model, not a place,” Strechay added.

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit from May 7-9. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer various ways to watch theCUBE’s 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 has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

SiliconANGLE also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

During Red Hat Summit 2024, theCUBE Research analysts will talk with industry executives, innovators, technologists, investors and thought leaders about open-source innovation, generative AI and cloud-native technologies. Stay tuned for our complete guest list.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Red Hat Summit. Neither Red Hat, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: SiliconANGLE