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>> We're back at the Red Hat Summit 2022,
theCUBE's continuous coverage, this is day one.
We're here all day tomorrow as well.
My name is Dave Vellante.
I'm here with Paul Gillin.
Matt Hicks is here.
He's executive vice president
of products and technologies at Red Hat.
Matt, good to see you.
Thanks for coming on.
Nice to see you face to face.
>> Thanks, thanks Dave, thanks Paul.
It's good to be here.
>> So you took a different tack with your keynote today.
Had a homage to Ada Lovelace and Srinivasa Ramanujan,
which was kind of cool, and your point was,
they weren't noted at their time,
and nobody was there to build on their early ideas.
I mean, Ada Lovelace, I think it was a century before.
Ramanujan was a decade plus,
and you tied that to open source.
Give us your kind of bumper sticker of your premise there.
>> Yeah, I think I have a unique seat in this from Red Hat
where we see new engineers that come in
that compete on a world stage in open source
and the best, which is easy to track, just in contributions
are not necessarily from the background
you would expect them from.
For me, it's always really inspiring.
Like you have this potential in people,
and open source is a great model for getting that out.
We told the history story, 'cause I think,
when you look over history,
just some of that potential that's been ignored before.
Sure, it's happening right now,
but getting that tied into open source models,
we think, can hopefully let us tap
into a little more than we have in the past, so.
>> Curiously, so when you're thinking about innovation,
and specific to open source, is it a case where,
I wonder, I don't really know the history here
of open source, maybe you can educate me.
Is it the case where open source observes
a defacto standard, let's say,
or some other proprietary approach,
and says, "Hey, we can build that in open,"
and that's the inspiration.
Or is it an innovation flywheel that just invents?
>> I think it's both at this stage.
So, in the early days, if you take something like Linux,
it was a little more of, there was the famous memo
of, "This is going to be a hobbyist project.
We're just going to light up x86 hardware
and have an operating system we can work with."
That was a little more of like the standards were there,
but it was, "Can we just build
a better operating system with it?"
>> Better than Unix, 'cause it would live up
to the promise of Unix. >> That's right.
And Unix, you had some standardization to models,
but it wasn't open in that same sense.
Linux has gone well beyond a hobbyist project at this point,
but that was maybe that clone model to Unix.
These days, though, if you take something like Kubernetes,
or take some like Ansible, that's just more pure innovation.
You didn't necessarily have a Kubernetes model
that you're building a better version of.
It was distributed computing
and how can we really make that tick
and bring a lot of great minds into that to build it.
So, I think you see both of 'em,
which is, it's one of the things that makes open source fun.
It has a broad reach at this point.
>> There's one major area of software
that open source has not penetrated yet,
and that is applications.
I mean, there have been SugarCRM,
there have been open ERP applications and such,
but none of them have really taken off and in fact,
they have tended to be drawn back to being proprietary.
Why do you suppose open source has been limited
to infrastructure and as hasn't branched out further?
>> Yeah, I think part of it is, where can you find a model
where lots of different companies
are comfortable contributing into?
If you have one solution and one domain from one company,
you're going to struggle more
getting a real vibrant community built around that.
When you pick an area like infrastructure or core platforms,
you have a lot of hardware providers,
the use cases span from traditional apps to AI,
you have a lot of places to run that
in some massive companies. >> So it's volume, really.
>> It really is.
You just have an interest that spans beyond companies,
and that's where we've seen open source projects
really pick up and build critical mass out of.
>> How about crypto?
DOWS?
I mean, that's right.
Isn't that the form of open source?
I mean, isn't that the application, really,
exactly what you're talking about?
Is it true or?
>> If you look at cryptography, encryption algorithms,
even go to quantum going forward,
I think a lot of quantum access
will be driven in an open source model.
The machines themselves will be machines,
but things like Kids kit,
that is how most people will access that.
So it is a powerful model for getting into areas
that are pretty bleeding edge on it as well.
>> We were talking- >> So-
>> Go ahead. >> Go ahead, please.
>> We were talking before Andy mentioned that hardware
and software are increasingly intersecting.
That was a theme we heard at the keynote this morning.
Why do you believe that's happening
and how do you see that?
How does that affect what you do?
>> I think the reason that's happening is,
there is a push to make decisions
closer and closer to users on it,
because, on one side, law of physics
and then on the other of,
it's just a better experience for it.
And so whether that is in transportation
or it's in telecommunications,
so you see this push outside the data centers
to be able to get at that data locally for it.
But if that's the draw, I think also,
we're seeing hardware architectures are changing.
There are standards like ARM that are lower power
that lets you run pretty powerful compute
at the edge, as well.
And I think it's that combination saying
we can do a lot at the edge now
and that actually benefits us building user experiences
in a lot of different domains,
is making this pull to the edge really quickly.
But it's an exciting time to be seeing that happening.
>> And pretty powerful is almost an understatement,
when you think about what the innovations
that are going on, right?
I mean, in particular at the edge.
I mean, you're seeing Moore's Law be blown.
Everybody says Moore's Law is dead,
but you're seeing the performance
of when you combine the GPU and the CPU
and the NPU and the accelerator.
I mean, it blows away anything we've historically known.
So you think about the innovations in software
that occurred as a result of Moore's Law,
what are the new beachheads
that we could potentially see in open source?
>> I think when you start taking the AI patterns on this,
and AI is a broad space, but if you go even
to machine learning of optimization type use cases,
you start leveraging how you're going to train those models,
which gets you into CPUs and GPUs and TPUs in that world.
And then you also have the,
"How am I going to take that train model,
put it on a really lightweight device,
and efficiently ask that model questions?"
And that gets you into a different architecture design.
But that combination, I think, we're going to see
these domains build differently
where you have mass compute training type capabilities,
and then push that as close to the user as you can
to make decisions that are more dynamic
than traditional codes.
>> So a lot of the AI that's done today
is modeling that's done in the cloud.
And what you're talking about at the edge,
and you think about vehicles, is real-time inferencing.
And that's massive amounts of data.
It's a different architecture, right?
And requires different hardware, presumably,
and different software.
So, and you guys, well, Linux is obviously there.
>> Yeah, that is where we get excited about things
like the GM announcement.
You are in the square, in that aspect
of running compute right at the end user,
and actually dealing with sensor
and data that's changing there to help, in this case,
like driver's assistance capabilities with it.
But I think that the innovation we'll see
in that space will be limitless on it.
So it's a nice combination of it, too,
and you'll still have traditional applications
that are going to use those models.
I think of it almost as it's the new middleware.
We have our traditional middleware techniques
that we know and patterns.
They will actually be augmented
with things like machine learning models
and those capabilities to just be more dynamic.
So it's a fun time right now seeing
that conversions. >> A lot of data, too.
Again, I wonder how much of that
is even going to be persisted?
Probably enough, 'cause there's going to be so much of it.
How much will come back to the cloud?
A lot, but maybe not most of it,
but it's still massive amounts
relative to what we've seen before.
>> It is, and this is, yeah, you've heard our announcement
around OpenShift streams and those capabilities.
At Red Hat, what we do,
we will always focus on hybrid with it,
because a lot of that data,
it'll be dropped at the edge, 'cause you won't need it.
But the data you act on and the data you need,
you will probably need at your end device
and in your cloud and maybe even on-premise,
and capabilities like Kafka
and the ability to pick and stream and stay consistent.
We think there's a set of really exciting services
to be able to enable that class of development,
where, hopefully, we'll be at the center of that.
>> You announced, today, an agreement with GM
to build on their Ultifi platform.
Auto industry, very proprietary, historically,
with their technology.
Do you think that this is an opportunity to crank that open?
>> A absolutely.
I've been involved with open source for a while,
but I think all of them started in a very proprietary model.
And then you get to a tipping point where open source models
can just unlock more innovation than proprietary models
and you see 'em tip and flip.
And I think in the automotive industry
and actually in a lot of other industries,
the capabilities of being able to combine hardware
and software fast with the latest capabilities,
it'll drive more innovation
than just sticking to proprietary models.
So, yeah, I believe it will be one
of many things to come there.
>> You've been involved in open source for a while.
Like how long of a while?
People must joke about, when they look at you, Matt,
they must say, "Well, did you start when you were five?
>> No, it's a- >> Do you get that a lot?
>> I do. (chuckles)
My children, I think, aged me a bit.
But yeah, for me, it was the mid-'90s.
That's when I started with open source.
>> It was- >> Wow!
>> It's been a long, long run.
>> You made the statement in your keynote
that software development is messy, and presumably,
part of your job is to make it less messy.
But now we talk about all these new beachheads,
these new innovations.
A lot of it's unknown and it could be really messy.
Is there a new breed of developer that's emerging?
Are they going to come over from the cloud developers,
or is it the IoT crowd and the OT crowd
that's going to be the new developers?
>> I wish I knew, but I would say,
I do think you'll get
to almost like a laws of physics type challenge,
where you won't learn everything.
You're not going to know the depths of 5G implementation
and Kubernetes and Linux on that.
And so for us, this is where ecosystem providers
are really, really critical,
where you have to know your intersection points,
but you also have to partner really well
to actually drive innovation in some of these spaces,
'cause the domains themselves are massive on it.
So our areas, we're going to know hybrid,
we're going to know open source-based platforms
to enable hybrid.
And then we're going to partner with companies
that know their domains and industries really well
to bring solutions to customers.
>> I'm curious about partnering,
'cause Paul Cormier mentioned that as well
as being critical.
Do you have sort of a template for partnering,
or is each partnership unique?
>> I think at this point, the market's changing so fast
that we do have templates of who are you going
to embed solutions with?
Who are you going to co-sell with and co-create?
The challenge in technology, though,
is it shifts so quickly.
If you go back five years, maybe even 10 years,
public cloud probably wasn't as dominant as it is now.
Now, we're starting to see the uptick of edge solutions,
probably having as much draw as public cloud.
And so I think, for us, the partnership follows
the innovation on those curves, and finding the right model
where that works for customers is the key thing for us.
But I wish there was more of a pattern.
We could say it stays stable for decades,
but I think it changes with the market on as we do that.
>> But it's funny, 'cause you see every 15 years or so,
the industry gets disrupted.
I mean, we certainly saw it with mainframes and PCs,
and then the internet, and then the cloud.
You guys have kind of been there, well, Linux, throughout.
Okay, it built the internet, it built the cloud,
it's building the edge.
So, it's almost, I don't want to say you're disruption-proof,
'cause that's just that's going to jinx you,
but you've architected the products in a way
that they're compatible with these new eras of industry.
>> Everything needs an operating system.
>> Everything needs an operating system
but you've seen operating systems come and go,
and Linux has survived so many different waves.
Why, how?
>> I think, for us, when you see open source projects,
they definitely get to a critical mass
where you have so much contribution,
so much innovation there
that they're going to be able to follow the trends pretty well.
If you look at Linux,
whatever the next hardware innovation that comes out is,
Linux has enough gravity that it's open, it's successful,
you're going to design to it, the capability will be there.
I think you're seeing similar things in Kubernetes now,
where if you're going to try
to drive application innovation,
it is a model that gives you a ton of reach.
You have thousands of contributors.
That's been our model, though, is find those projects,
be influential in 'em,
be able to drive value in life cycles.
But I think it's that open source model
that gives us the durability
where it can keep changing and tracking to new patterns, so.
>> Yeah, there's been a lot of open source
that wasn't able to sustain.
So I think, you guys, obviously, have a magic formula.
>> That's true.
There is some art to picking, I think, millions of projects,
but you've got to watch
for that critical mass. >> Yeah, open source is also
a place where failed products go to die.
So you have to be sure you're not in that corner.
>> Well, look at Kubernetes.
I mean, the fact that that actually happened,
it's astounding to me when you think about it.
I mean, even Red Hat was ready to go on a different path.
What if that had happened?
Who knows?
Maybe to your point about Ava Lovelace,
maybe it would've taken a decade to, or revolution.
>> I think in some of these,
you have to watch really closely.
We obviously have a lot of signals
of what will make good long-term health.
And I don't think everyone looks at those the same.
We look at 'em from trademark controls
and how foundations are structured,
and who the contributors are and the spread of that.
And it's not perfect, but I think for us,
you have to have that longevity built in there
or you will have a spike of popularity
that has the tendency to just fall apart on it.
We've been, yeah, doing that pretty well.
>> To dwell in conditions for a long life
is something that's a...
Maybe it's an art form.
I don't know if it's a data form.
It's a culture, maybe?
Maybe it's culture.
>> Yeah, probably a combination.
Some days, I think, I'm like,
this could be part art, part science,
but it's certainly a fun space to be in,
and see that happen,
yeah, it's inspiring to me.
>> Matt Hicks, great to have you back on theCUBE
and good job on the keynote.
Really interesting angle that you took.
So congratulations. >> Awesome.
Thanks for having me.
>> Yeah, you're very welcome.
All right, keep it right there.
Dave Vellante, for Paul Gillin,
Red Hat Summit 2022 from Boston.
You're watching theCUBE.
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