>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with coverage of KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe 2021-Virtual, brought to you by Red Hat, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Ecosystem Partners. >> Hey, welcome back everyone to theCUBE's coverage of KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2021-Virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host here on theCUBE. We've got Steve Gordon, Director of Product Management, Cloud Platforms at Red Hat. Steve, welcome to theCUBE, good to see you, thanks for coming on. >> Hey John, thanks for having me on, it's great to be back. >> So soon we'll be in real life, I think North America show, this is for the Europe Virtual, I think the North American one might be in person. It's not yet official. We'll hear, but we'll find out, but looking good so far. But thanks for all your collaboration. You guys have been a big part of the CNCF we've been covering on theCUBE, as you know, since the beginning. But, I wanted to get into the Edge conversation that's been going on. And first I want to just get this out there. You guys are sponsoring Edge Day here at KubeCon. I want you to bring that together for us, because this is a big part of what Red Hat's talking about and frankly customers. The Edge is the most explosive growth area. It's got the most complexity, it's crazy. It's got data, it's got everything at the Edge. Everything's happening. How important is Kubernetes to Edge Computing? >> Yeah, it's certainly interesting to be here talking about it now, and having kind of a dedicated Kubernetes Edge Day. I was thinking back earlier, I think it was one of the last in-person KubeCon events I think, if not the last, the San Diego event where there was already kind of a cresting of interest in Edge and kind of topics on the agenda around Edge. And it's just great to see that momentum has continued up to where we are today. And really more and more people not only talking about using Kubernetes for Edge, but actually getting in there and doing it. And I think, when we look at why people are doing that, they're really leaning into some of the things that they saw as strengths of Kubernetes in general, that they're now able to apply to edge computing use cases in terms of what they can actually do in terms of having a common interface to this very powerful platform that you can take to a growing multitude of footprints, be they your public cloud providers, where a lot of people may have started their Kubernetes journey or their own data center, to these edge locations where they're increasingly trying to do processing closer to where they're collecting data, basically. >> You know, when you think about Edge and all the evolution with Cloud Native, what's interesting is Kubernetes is enabling a lot of value. I'd like to get your thoughts. What are you hearing from customers around use cases? I mean, you are doing product management, you've got to document all the features, the wishlist. You have the keys to the kingdom on what's going on over at Red Hat. You know, we're seeing just the amazing connectivity between businesses with hybrid cloud. It's a game changer. Haven't seen this kind of change at this level since the late '80s, early '90s in terms of inflection point impact. This is huge. What are you hearing? >> I think it's really interesting that you use the word connectivity there because one of the first edge computing use cases that I've really been closely involved with and working a lot on, which then grows into the others, is around telecommunications and 5G networking. And the reason we're working with service providers on that adoption of Kubernetes as they build 5G basically as a cloud native platform from the ground up, is they're really leveraging what they've seen with Kubernetes elsewhere and taking that to deliver this connectivity, which is going to be crucial for other use cases. If you think about people whether they're trying to do automotive edge cases, where they're increasingly putting more sensors on the car to make smarter decisions, but also things around the infotainment system using more and more data there as well. If you think about factory edge, all of these use cases build on connectivity as one of the core fundamental things they need. So that's why we've been really zoomed in there with the service providers and our partners, trying to deliver a 5G networking capabilities as fast as we can and the throughput and latency benefits that come with that. >> If you don't mind me asking, I got to just go one step deeper if you don't mind. You mentioned some of these use cases, the connectivity. You know, IoT was the big buzz word, okay IoT. It's an Edge, it's Operational Technology, or it's a dumb endpoint or a node on the network has connectivity. It's got power. It's a purpose built device. It's operating, it's getting surveillance data, whatever the hell it's doing, right. It's got Edge. Now you're bringing in more intelligent, which is an IT kind of thing, state, databases, caching. Is the database too slow? Is it too fast? So again, it brings up more complexity. Can you just talk about how you view that? Because this is what I'm hearing, what do you think? >> Yeah, I agree. I think there's a real spectrum, when we talk about edge computing, both in terms of the footprints and the locations, and the various constraints that each of those imply. And sometimes those strengths can be, as you're talking about as a specially designed board which has a very specific chip on it, has very specific memory and storage constraints or it can be a literal physical constraint in terms of I only have this much space in this location to actually put something, or that space is subject to excess heat or other considerations environmentally. And I think when we look at what we're trying to provide, not just with Kubernetes but also with Linux, is a variety of solutions that can help people no matter where they are along that spectrum of the smallest devices where maybe Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or REL for Edge is suitable to those use cases where maybe there's a little more flexibility in terms of, what are the workloads I might want to run on that in the future? Or how do I want to grow that environment potentially in the future as well? If I want to add nodes, then all of a sudden, the capability that nannies brings can be a more flexible building base for them to start with. >> So with all of these use cases and the changing dynamics and the power dynamics between Operational Technology in IT, which we're kind of riffing on, what should developers take away from that when they're considering their development, whether they just want an app, be app developers, programming the infrastructure or they're tinkering with the underlying, some database work, or if they're under the hood kind of full dev ops? What should developers take into consideration for all these new use cases? >> Yeah, I think one of the key things is that we're trying to minimize the impact to the developer as much as we can. Now of course, with an edge computing use case where you may be designing your application specifically for that board or device, then that's a more challenging proposition. But there's also the case increasingly where that intelligence already exists in the application somewhere, whether it's in the data center or in the cloud, and they're just trying to move it closer to that endpoint, where the actual data is collected. And that's where I think there's a really powerful story in terms of being able to use Kubernetes and OpenShift as that interface that the application developer interacts with but can use that same interface, whether they're running in the cloud maybe for development purposes, but also when they take it to production and it's running somewhere else. >> I got to ask you the AI impact because every conversation I have or everyone I interview that's an expert as a practitioner is usually something along the lines of chief architect of cloud and AI. You're seeing a lot of cloud, SRE, cloud-scale architects meeting and also running the AI piece, especially in industries. So AI as a certain component seems to be resonating from a functional persona standpoint. People who are doing these transformations tend to have cloud and AI responsibility. Is that a fluke or is that just the pattern that's real? >> No, I think that's very real. And I think when you look at AI and machine learning and how it works, it's very data centric in terms of what is the data I'm collecting, sending back to the mothership, maybe in terms of actually training my model. But when I actually go to processing something, I want to make that as close as I can to the actual data collection, so that I can minimize what I'm trying to send back. Particularly, people may not be as cognizant of it, but even today, many times we're talking about sites where that connectivity is actually fairly limited in some of these edge use cases still today. So what you're actually putting over the pipe is something you're still trying to minimize, while trying to advance your business and improve your agility, by making these decisions closer to the edge. >> What's the advantage for Red Hat? Talk about the benefits. What are you guys bringing to the table? Obviously, hybrid cloud is the new shift. Everyone's agreed to that. I mean, pretty much the consensus is public clouds, great, been there, done that. It's out there pumping out as a resource, but now enterprise is goading us to keep stuff on premises, especially when you talk about factories or whatever, on premises, things that they might need, stuff on premise. So it's clear hybrid is happening. Everyone's in agreement. What does Red Hat bring to the table? What's in it for the customer? >> Yeah, I think I would say hybrid is really an evolving at the moment in terms of, I think, Hybrid has kind of gone through this transition where, first of all, it was maybe moving from my data center to public cloud and I'm managing most of those through that transition, and maybe I'm (indistinct) public clouds. And now we're seeing this transition where it's almost that some of that processing is moving back out again closer to the use case of the data. And that's where we really see as an extension of our existing hybrid cloud story, which is simply to say that we're trying to provide a consistent experience and interface for any footprint, any location, basically. And that's where OpenShift is a really powerful platform for doing this. But also, it's got Kubernetes at the heart of it. but it's also worth considering when we look at Kubernetes, is there's this entire Cloud Native ecosystem around it. And that's an increasingly crucial part of why people are making these decisions as well. It's not just Kubernetes itself, but all of those other projects both directly in the CNCF ecosystem itself, but also in that broader CNCF landscape of projects which people can leverage, and even if they don't leverage them today, know they have options out there for when they need to change in the future if they have a new need for their application. >> Yeah, Steve, I totally agree with you. And I want to just get your thoughts on this because I was kind of riffing with Brian Gracely who works at Red Hat on your team. And he was saying that, you know, we were talking about KubeCon + CloudNativeCon as the name of the conference. He's a little bit more CloudNativeCon this year than KubeCon, inferring, implying, and saying that, okay so what about Kubernetes, Kubernetes, Kubernetes? Now it's like, whoa, CloudNative is starting to come to the table, which shows the enablement of Kubernetes. That was our point. The point was, okay, if Kubernetes does its job as creating a lever, some leverage to create value and that's being rendered in CloudNative, and that enterprise is, not the hardcore hyperscalers and/or the early adopters, I call it classic enterprise, are coming in. They're contributing to open source as participants, and they're harvesting the value in creating CloudNative. What's your reaction to that? And can you share your perspective on there's more CloudNative going on than ever before? >> Yeah, I certainly think, you know, we've always thought from the beginning of OpenShift that it was about more than just Linux and Kubernetes and even the container technologies that came before them from the point of view of, to really build a fully operational and useful platform, you need more than just those pieces. That's something that's been core to what we've been trying to build from the beginning. But it's also what you see in the community is people making those decisions as well, as you know, what are these pieces I need, whether it's fairly fundamental infrastructure concerns like logging and monitoring, or whether it's things like trying to enable different applications on top using projects like KubeVert for virtualization, Istio for service mesh and so on. You know, those are all considerations that people have been making gradually. I think what you're seeing now is there's a growing concern in some of these areas within that broad CNCF landscape in terms of, okay, what is the right option for each of these things that I need to build the platform? And certainly, we see our role is to guide customers to those solutions, but it's also great to see that consensus emerging in the communities that we care about, like the CNCF. >> Great stuff. Steve, I got to ask you a final question here. As you guys innovate in the open, I know your roadmaps are all out there in the open. And I got to ask you, product managing is about making decisions about what you what you work on. I know there's a lot of debates. Red Hat has a culture of innovation and engineering, so there's heated arguments, but you guys align at the end of the day. That's kind of the culture. What's top of mind, if someone asks you, "Hey, Steve, bottom line, I'm a Red Hat customer. I'm going full throttle as a hybrid. We're investing. You guys have the cloud platforms, what's in it for me? What's the bottom line?" What do you say? >> Yeah, I think the big thing for us is, you know, I talked about that this is extending the hybrid cloud to the edge. And we're certainly very conscious that we've done a great job at addressing a number of footprints that are core to the way people have done computing today. And now as we move to the edge, that there's a real challenge to go and address more of those footprints. And that's, whether it's delivering OpenShift on a single node of itself, but also working with cloud providers on their edge solutions, as they move further out from the cloud as well. So I think that's really core to the mission is continuing to enable those footprints so that we can be true to that mission of delivering a platform that is consistent across any footprint at any location. And certainly that's core to me. I think the other big trend that we're tracking and really continuing to work on, you know, you talked about AI machine learning, the other other space we really see kind of continuing to develop and certainly relevant in the work with the telecommunications companies I do but also increasingly in the accelerator space where there's really a lot of new and very interesting things happening with hardware and silicon, whether it be kind of FPGAs, EA6, and even the data processing units, lots of things happening in that space that I think are very interesting and going to be key to the next three to five years. >> Yeah, and software needs to run on hardware. Love your tagline there. It sounds like a nice marketing slogan. Any workload, any footprint, any location. (laughs) Hey, DevSecOps, you got to scale it up. So good job. Thank you very much for coming on. Steve Gordon, Director of Product Management, Clout Platforms, Red Hat, Steve, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks, John, really appreciate it. >> Okay, this is theCUBE coverage of KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2021 Europe Virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host from theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (serene music)

>> From around the globe it's theCUBE with digital coverage of AnsibleFest 2020, brought to you by Red Hat. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is a preview for Red Hat's AnsibleFest 2020, second year that theCUBE's been at the event. Happy to welcome back to the program one of our CUBE alumni, Joe Fitzgerald, he's the vice president and general manager of the division that includes Ansible. Joe, thank you and welcome back to the program. >> Thanks for having me back, Stu, excited to be here. >> So Joe, you know, boy, I think since last year, you know, the overarching trend of automation adoption has only increased, of course, with conversation you and I have had back at Red Hat Summit, as well as all the conversations we're having across the industry. It's been five years now since Red Hat bought Ansible. Remember, you know, big activities at Summit and throughout the industry. A lot has changed. The players that we talked about five years ago definitely have shifted. So why don't you bring us in is to, you know, 2020 you know, the state of your Ansible business and let's give the audience a preview of what we're going to see at the show. >> Sure. So it's been an exciting five years. I can't believe how fast it flew. You know, five years ago when Red Hat acquired this little company called Ansible, they were basically, you know, selling to IT admins in a particular space around config management. They, you know, frequently got lumped in with a, you know, a couple of other companies that were in that segment. Over the past five years the stats are just amazing. Over the past four years it's been in the top 10 open source projects in the world, right? I think Kubernetes is number seven, Ansell's number nine and has been in the top 10 for past five years. The number of contributors, the number of folks with Ansible in their skills, the titles, I mean, the numbers are just amazing. And of course we've had, you know, analyst validation and thousands of customers vote with their subscriptions to Ansible. So it's an amazing five years growth. >> Yeah. Okay. Congratulations. Of course the concern always is, you know, oh, when an acquisition happens, what will happen to the culture, what will happen to the community? Red Hat, everyone knows open sources is in its DNA there. And therefore the community has flourished. I definitely see Ansible at many of the cloud and cloud native type discussions. You talked to, you mentioned Kubernetes, Joe, help draw the dots, connect the dots for us as to, you know, what should we be expecting to see when it comes to things like, you know, Kubernetes, cloud computing, edge computing and the like. >> So it's pretty interesting because, you know, OpenShift has been our flagship offering around Kubernetes at Red Hat, right? And market leader just incredible validation, right? And so, you know, automation connected up to that environment becomes really, really important because even though people are modernizing their apps and running container based apps, there's a lot of other things that those things need to be connected up to. Traditional applications, other systems of record, your CMDBs or change management, things like that. So there's a lot of automation that has to happen around, you know, building, deploying, managing container based apps in those environments. So sort of a teaser for what's coming up here is you're going to see us pushing Ansible even further into areas like Kubernetes and OpenShift at AnsibleFest. >> Yeah, Joe, when I look at the entire landscape, one of the big challenges out there is there's so many tools out there, you know, developers have all the little pieces that they're dealing with. If you talk about Kubernetes, it's "Okay, which cluster am I doing? How do we wrap our arms around managing environments?" I've talked to you about the ACM solution came out of IBM, now part of Red Hat. What I really love that the top learning I had from AnsibleFest last year is various people in the organization can get their view into really that pipeline of development from the product people through the developer. You know, we always hope that software can be a unifying, you know, tool inside an organization. And it definitely felt like Ansible's doing that. So, do we expect that when we talk about Kubernetes, that's the kind of expansion we have is that, you know, not just that I can do more as an individual person, but inside the organization, we can break through some of those silos. >> Yeah. So I think this plays to Ansible's strength. So Ansible, as I mentioned, five years ago was sort of IT admins focused on config. Over the years, we've expanded the number of domains dramatically into network storage, cloud security. We've also expanded the people who use Ansible automation. So Ansible is extremely popular with developers. It's a favorite in tool chains, right, around automation and config and things like that. So bringing together sort of the automation that crosses all those domains and the different personas that use Ansible, right, now bringing that and connecting that up to the Kubernetes environment, right, is extremely powerful in so many ways and covers a lot of the areas where the automation in those Kubernetes environments sort of ends and you have to have that connection to the other teams and to the other technologies that are outside of that to make the thing work. >> All right. So what specifically, should we be expecting to see, you know, what'll be the same, what'll be the different of the virtual environment versus what everybody's come to expect for the in person AnsibleFest? >> Well, first of all, the numbers are amazing, right? We've run a number of events over the course of the year. You know, training webinars, you know, all sorts of Ansible events. Every one of them has exceeded our expectations by a lot. AnsibleFest is no different. We're currently over 15,000 people registered for AnsibleFest. It would not surprise me to see it go much higher than that. Our last in-person Ansible event was 12,000 people. The level of interest globally, right, across personas for AnsibleFest is just amazing. So we think we're going to see a tremendous amount of interest and in typical Red Hat fashion at Fest, we're going to bring out additional Ansible capabilities around Kubernetes environment, obviously, but talking about where Ansible's going with Edge, right, and a number of areas that people are pushing out on Ansible automation. I believe Ansible's becoming sort of the de facto standard in automation, regardless of what domain, regardless of what persona. And I think AnsibleFest is going to show again why it is. >> Awesome. Well, Joe bold statement. Absolutely phenomenal to see the momentum there. I'll let you have the final word as to if they haven't already, why should people sign up and any other kind of, you know, cool customers or things that people should dive into once they have a chance to look at the agenda? >> Well, if somebody is familiar with Ansible, then they're going to love the expansion of the domains and the capabilities necessary to really expand usage of Ansible. If you're new to Ansible, Ansible, you know, if you look at the number of LinkedIn jobs that talk about Ansible, it's, you know, it's in the tens of thousands, right? Indeed top 10 skill that people are looking for in hiring. So automation is more important than ever given the sort of the world backdrop. So I would encourage people to really look at Ansible, right, to expand the professional, you know, skills and things like that. And people that are already in the know that are using Ansible, wait till you see how you can use it for Kubernetes Edge and really expand it beyond where you are today with it. >> All right. Well, Joe Fitzgerald, thank you so much. And to our audience, you know, go check out the website, really easy to find, register online. theCUBE will have a full lineup. John Furrier is going to be the lead host for the event in our second year of coverage. Joe, have a great event and as always, thanks for having theCUBE. >> Thanks, Stu. Appreciate it. >> All right, check out theCUBE.net for all the upcoming events, as well as you can look at the back catalog. Of course, we've done seven years of Red Hat Summit as well as the AnsibleFest last year. So lots of good customer studies, as well as deep dives on all the product. Thank you for joining. I'm Stu Miniman. Thanks as always for watching. (upbeat music)