Red Hat Summit 2017 Focuses on Future of Containers

Red Hat has evolved over the years beyond its core Linux roots and is now also focusing on the cloud and containers. At the Red Hat Summit that ran May 2-4 in Boston, Red Hat executives emphasized time and again that Linux and the open-source model remain the foundation of everything it does. But Red Hat also used its conference as the platform to announce a new developer service for containers called OpenShift.io, as well as a new Container Health Index for application container security and stability. In addition, Red Hat announced an expanded partnership with Amazon Web Services, enabling a more integrated experience for OpenShift-based container deployments. In this slide show, eWEEK looks at some of the highlights of Red Hat Summit 2017.

Although Red Hat builds and sells an OpenStack cloud platform, the reality is that most Red Hat customers are multicloud. According to data presented by Red Hat President Paul Cormier, 59 percent of customers are planning to or already have a multicloud environment.

Although the container phenomenon is only 3 years old, Red Hat already claims some big brand name customers that are running containers in production.

Among the new services announced by Red Hat is the Container Health Index, which provides a rating of application container quality and security.

For the most part, Red Hat’s container effort in the past had a strong focus on deployment pipelines. At Red Hat Summit 2017, Red Hat announced its new developer-focused OpenShift.io online service, providing a new platform for building containers in the cloud.

One of Red Hat’s big announcements at its summit was expanded integration with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

A primary message that Red Hat President Paul Cormier made sure he got across not only during his keynote but also in a press conference that followed is that Linux is at the core Red Hat’s container efforts. Cormier emphasized that all the innovation that is coming from the application development and cloud areas has been built on Linux and open source. “Containers are Linux, and I think that is something a lot of the industry has missed,” he said. “It’s not magic—it’s Linux.”

During his keynote, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst argued that developing proscriptive plans is not necessarily the best way to build a product or a company. Rather, the open-source model has proved that a more iterative approach where employees are free to try things, learn from experience and then modify based on experience is a better way.