The Red Hat Summit kicked-off today in Boston, showcasing the latest open source innovations in cloud computing, platform, virtualisation, middleware, storage, and systems management technologies.

Advertised with the tagline "when customers, partners, peers, and people all plug in to Summit, the synapses start firing and the possibilities pop", CBR took a look at the day one announcements to see if the Summit is delivering that promised ‘pop’.

 

1. OpenShift Commons Boom

The Red Hat Summit marks 100 days since the launch of OpenShift Commons, with the company today announcing significantly increased participation in the ecosystem for its OpenShift offering for both public and private cloud deployments.

Launched in February 2015, OpenShift now boasts more than 100 member organisations working together to build the next generation of open source innovation.

New participants in OpenShift Commons includes Couchbase, MariaDB, Mesosphere, Telstra and OwnCloud among others.

Ashesh Badani, Vice President of OpenShift, said: "Watching the growth of the OpenShift Commons community since its introduction in February has continued to affirm strong industry interest around innovation in cloud and container technology.

"We are delighted to share knowledge and collaborate on best practices around application development and operations with a diverse group of users and partners in an open forum and enable developers to contribute to projects they are passionate about."

2. Education On-Demand

The Red Hat Learning Subscription made its debut on the opening day of the Summit, offering an annual subscription featuring unlimited access to Red Hat’s full portfolio of training content.

Delivered through a combination of online courses, videos, and hands-on labs, the Red Hat Learning Subscription is designed to help customers accelerate the speed and ease of on-boarding new staff, the adoption of new releases, and cross-training across multiple products.

Subscribers will have access to a myriad of learning options, including platform, cloud, virtualization, middleware, and storage solutions. More than 400 videos are included within the tracks, and customers can access content, practice environments, and training materials on-demand.

All content is indexed and searchable and can be used for on-the-job learning and performance support.

Ken Goetz, vice president of Worldwide Training, said: "The growth of open source, cloud, and ‘as-a-service’ offerings has opened the doorway for the type of in-depth, on-demand training that the Red Hat Learning Subscription offers.

"The subscription provides customers a way to learn about many Red Hat products, including our emerging technologies, and how they function together. This knowledge will help customers get the best possible value out of the Red Hat products they use, and gain insight into how other products can help their businesses."

3. New Chief Financial Officer Joins from Cisco

Frank Calderoni will join the company as executive vice president, operations and chief financial officer, reporting to Red Hat president and chief executive officer, Jim Whitehurst. He will be responsible for leading the company’s global finance organization and the leadership and management of IT and operations teams.

With more than 30 years of experience, Calderoni served as executive vice president and CFO at Cisco Systems for seven years and most recently served as an executive advisor. During his tenure at Cisco, the company went from $22 billion in revenue to $47 billion, and grew annual profits from $0.62 per share to $1.49 per share.

In addition to his time at Cisco, Calderoni also led high-performing finance organizations at global software and technology companies including QLogic, SanDisk and IBM.

Calderoni succeeds Red Hat executive vice president and CFO Charlie Peters, whose planned retirement was announced in December 2014, and who will remain with Red Hat until July 31. Calderoni joins Red Hat on June 22, 2015, and will succeed Peters as CFO effective July 13, 2015.

Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat CEO said: "We are thrilled to have Frank join Red Hat and help lead the next phase of our growth as we look to go from revenues approaching $2 billion to $10 billion and beyond. He is a proven CFO and technology industry leader, and we are fortunate to have such an experienced and operationally strong executive join our team.

"I’d also like to express gratitude to Charlie for his commitment to Red Hat. He has been instrumental in Red Hat’s success for more than a decade, helping to lead to our strong financial position, and I look forward to similar success under Frank’s leadership."

4. developers.redhat.com

A new site tailored for professional developers was announced, promising to provide easy access to tools and materials for those who are focused on building solutions for the enterprise.

One of the main benefits is a simplified user registration that allows users to have one login and gain access to a range of Red Hat developer products including OpenShift Online.

The company revealed that the new site is just one component of a comprehensive developer program that they are working towards over the next 12 months. Promising to help grow and support open source innovation for all developers, the new site provides access to Red Hat’s supported products and the chance for developers to get involved with the company’s upstream open source communities from one place.

5. Installation Innovations

Red Hat gave a glimpse into innovations currently in development, including the Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform director.

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform director is designed to serve as the next-generation tool for deployment as well as management of updates and upgrades of the OpenStack infrastructure.

The director will combine installer technologies from eNovance (acquired by Red Hat in 2014), Red Hat’s current installation tools, and productisation of the core upstream OpenStack management project, TripleO.

In addition to initial infrastructure installation, the new director is expected to provide day-to-day operational management capabilities, such as greater operational visibility into the core components, while providing a means to confirm that resources are consistently deployed and are properly configured for production use. It will also offer improved infrastructure lifecycle management, including live orchestrated system upgrades with rollback capabilities.

Live upgrades are scheduled to be supported from version 7.0 and ongoing releases from there, for deployments using Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform director. This is a very important feature for enterprise production use, allowing cloud administrators to easily upgrade their OpenStack cloud with minimal downtime.