CEO of RedHat on VMware, OpenStack, and CentOS

CEO of RedHat on VMware, OpenStack, and CentOS

RedHat has completed an acquisition to build an open-source stack that leads the hybrid data center, and its main competitor is VMware. The duel between RedHat and VMware remains to be observed, but Jim whitehust, CEO of RedHat, believes that open source will ultimately define the future of enterprise IT architecture.

I met whitehirst and talked to him about the overall planning of cloud, open source, and RedHat companies. Next, let's take a look at some of the key topics in my conversation with whitehust:

Recent Acquisitions and big landscape. RedHat recently acquired the OpenStack integrator eNovance and Inktank, a software-defined storage company well-known as the Ceph enterprise platform. "An open-source stack will be created to implement infrastructure and platform-as-a-service," said whitehirst ". Redhat's acquisition does not aim at intellectual property rights, but focuses on talents and innovative open-source projects such as Ceph objects and block storage platforms.

Ceph is a method for horizontally scalable storage. Whitehirst believes that storage will switch to open-source because of cloud computing and new analysis workloads. OpenStack will also mean that technologies like Ceph will be widely used over time.

New workload. RedHat and a series of recent storage and cloud platform plans actually focus on capturing new workloads in enterprises. "We tried to migrate and replace Unix and Linux. A simpler approach is to use open-source technologies such as JBoss to target new workloads and then migrate them. Cloud deployment constantly has new workloads ." He added that the Red Hat Gluster storage technology will target new unstructured data workloads.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and upgrade rewards. When I asked the customer why it was migrated to RHEL 7, whitehirst said the problem was ignored. He does not care about when they will upgrade. "The most important part of the Red Hat business model is that we don't care whether you will upgrade. If you are a subscription user, this issue is not important at all. From an economic point of view, we do not care whether the customer will upgrade ."

RHEL 7 supports packaging a large number of other functions. This version will have an upgrade cycle that summarizes previous releases. The customer will run the existing workload on any of their existing RHEL versions. The new workload will run on the latest version because it is built for public and private cloud deployment.

OpenStack. Whitehirst has not cut down OpenStack at all. He pointed out that RedHat is the biggest contributor to OpenStack, and the company's goal is to make OpenStack stable, secure, and enterprise-level. He believes that fragmentation is not a problem. "Many competitors oppose OpenStack and say it is fragmented. But OpenStack is far less fragmented than Linux ."

Redhat's OpenStack policy is unique because it sells services instead of hardware or consulting services. In this way, adding proprietary technologies will not drive OpenStack from being less open-source. "Our value orientation is different from that of IBM or HP ."

Define a red hat. When I asked if RedHat would be regarded as a Linux or Cloud Company, whitehud was a little annoyed. RedHat is an open-source company, which is also the company's every move. "Our DNA is our focus on the most innovative open-source projects for Enterprises ."

This DNA will lead the world to the cloud, but it also changes Linux from a middleware-oriented operating system to a platform-as-a-service and virtualization. In the future, open source will turn RedHat into the Internet.

"Open Source gives us brand approval to enter many fields. We are looking for all the technologies that are most valuable to the Enterprise. In some cases, the network is a natural thing for us, and we are very active in Open Daylight projects. We are doing open source and making it a production system, regardless of the type ."

CentOS. CentOS is a lightweight version of RHEL. One saying is that CentOS may be very interesting for enterprises, because enterprises may hire their own Linux administrators to support RedHat. This statement is misleading, says whitehirst. "CentOS is a derivative version of RHEL. RHEL is suitable for those who want stable release without support. If they don't see the value of our model, at least I 'd rather let them use something similar to RHEL ."

Another noteworthy thing about CentOS is that Redhat has taken over top contributors to the project. "We don't regard CentOS as a competitor, but a supplement ." He pointed out that the enterprise that chooses CentOS will not be a RedHat customer anyway.

So what is the value of Red Hat? "CentOS allows developers to speed up HREL-related innovation, and all of this is related to stability," said whitehust. "RedHat is very suitable for production environments, but there are so many new innovations in OpenStack. Red Hat's product family does not have such support. CentOS is growing faster and faster, and fills the gaps in our product portfolio ."

In other words, CentOS provides the developer community with something that can be used, contributed by red hat, and accelerated learning.

Red Hat and VMware. Obviously, VMware is the top competitor of RedHat, as indicated by whitehirst. "Our software defined vision is the same, but the two models are very different. Our model is open source with licensed IP addresses ." Whitehirst acknowledges that VMware is strong because of its share of virtualization, making it a private cloud-defined architecture. However, in the long run, OpenStack will win a lot of attention.

"The definition architecture of hybrid cloud will be OpenStack or vCloud ." This is indicated by whitehirst. RedHat will do well in this regard, if "we have a place in the right community ." It is unclear whether hybrid cloud manages virtual instances (VMware) or containers (OpenStack ). "We don't have a strong architectural positioning, but if we are involved in a community that creates innovation, then value will be with us ."

For VMware, a key issue is that all vendors in the OpenStack ecosystem. The common bond between them is: "No vendor in this ecosystem wants to create the next Microsoft. This is the key reason why there are so many OpenStack support options. The customer does not want to be locked by any party. Even VMware customers may have a red hat because they want an open choice ."