Editor’s note: Nicole Catchpole is Senior Analyst at Technology Business Research.
HAMPTON, N.H. – The open source proposition has been embedded in Red Hat’s roots since the company’s founding in 1993 and has since remained at the core of its guiding principles, with Linux operating system (OS) at the heart of all its innovations. Vendor loyalty and clearly charted paths were the mantras many companies operated on for years, while “digital transformation” was barely on an enterprise’s short-term road map.
Then a decade ago, cloud adoption surged, creating the impetus to embrace more agile and flexible development models, and open source technologies emerged.
While business models centered on open source software have proved challenging for many, Red Hat’s pre-established culture and leadership around open source communities solidifies the Raleigh-based Red Hat brand, paving the way for rapid scale, as the company has captured over 90% of the Fortune 500 as clients and in 2019 became the first open source-defined company to reach $3 billion in annual revenue.
Inside IBM: Partnerships with India-based peers, Red Hat mean cloud opportunities
During a recent conference, Products and Technologies EVP Matt Hicks discussed how Red Hat is leveraging its foundational strengths in an open hybrid cloud approach, which, by virtue of being open, goes beyond technology and extends to processes, cultures and transformation, to further differentiate.
[Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment that uses a mix of on-premises, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms, according to WhatIs.com]
Red Hat is releasing new offerings to capture opportunities around hybrid infrastructures, application development and management while rapidly scaling up the integration of technologies such as AI and edge, bolstered by collaborative engines like its Innovation Labs.
Originally scheduled to be hosted in San Francisco, Red Hat Summit 2020 went virtual and offered participants numerous opportunities to virtually engage in hands-on labs, converse with industry leads and hear from Red Hat customers, and it did so while maintaining the spirit of openness and collaboration for which Red Hat is known.
While the topic of COVID-19 did not overtly dominate the discussions or significantly color the overarching Red Hat messaging, it became clear that the ability to pivot rapidly, embrace change and remain flexible will underscore Red Hat’s efforts to successfully promote transformation amid the pandemic. Red Hat’s reputation has historically been predicated on its open and agile approach to development and deployment, long before such attributes were considered valuable, let alone essential.
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(C) TBRI
