Any business that runs just one or two applications isn’t a modern business. These days, companies are more likely to use a bunch of tools than just a few. Those tools must be managed, yet wrangling applications becomes more complex with each one thrown on the pile.

The solution is consistent automation across the whole system, according to Joe Fitzgerald, vice president of the Cloud Management Business Unit at Red Hat Inc.

Fitzgerald spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile live-streaming studio, during Red Hat Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. (*Disclosure below.) They discussed automation, new technology, enterprise automation and Red Hat’s vision.

Open-source system services

“As all these technologies change, it really puts pressure on enterprise to try and figure out how to manage all this stuff,” Fitzgerald said. He then described how Red Hat saw that management happening in the enterprise.

Right now, tools and applications are often built into silos. Those silos can be composed into systems of automation. One challenge is that these tools don’t talk to each other, he explained. They need a common language between them. A technology called Ansible can act as that language to automate across domains and tie things together.

Ansible is not entirely now. It’s been around for a few years in the open-source community, where it enjoyed some popularity. Under Red Hat’s care, Ansible has exploded into the enterprise, Fitzgerald stated. This is because it can automate networks, compute, storage and work with the cloud.

“This new technology is fundamentally different,” Fitzgerald said. This is vital because the rate of change in the business world is incredible. Tools that are 10 or 15 years old can’t handle the new environments, he added. To change at the speed of business, companies will need new tools to automate things. Without the management burden, companies will be better able to focus on things that improve their business.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Red Hat Summit 2017. (* Disclosure: Red Hat Inc. sponsors some Red Hat Summit segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Red Hat nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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