Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to this special
Speaker 1: Bonus sponsored episode of tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with How Stuff Works and I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and I love all things tech and back in
Speaker 1: July two thousand nineteen, IBM completed it's acquisition of the
Speaker 1: company red Hat, famed for its work in open source software.
Speaker 1: The company's invited me out to red Hat headquarters, which
Speaker 1: does in fact have a big red hat on it,
Speaker 1: to talk about why the company has made this move,
Speaker 1: how they plan to work together, and ultimately what does
Speaker 1: this mean for all of us? And so in this episode,
Speaker 1: you're going to hear sections of an interview I did
Speaker 1: with IBMS Steve Robinson and red hats a Chesh Badani,
Speaker 1: and I'll be popping in and out to give a
Speaker 1: bit more content text and explanation. But first I want
Speaker 1: to set the stage a bit. Now. We're mainly going
Speaker 1: to talk about cloud computing and open source software in
Speaker 1: this conversation, and the reason that this is a big
Speaker 1: deal is that more companies are putting more of their
Speaker 1: operations on the cloud, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: different reasons to do this. One is to make sure
Speaker 1: that the services they provide are available whenever and wherever
Speaker 1: the end user needs them, whether the end user is
Speaker 1: someone else in the company, a different company, or a
Speaker 1: consumer like you or me. Another reason is to maximize resources,
Speaker 1: and there are tons of other reasons besides those that
Speaker 1: companies do this. What about the average user? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't run a global company with worldwide service, so
Speaker 1: why do I care about all this? Well, for me,
Speaker 1: it's about the utility and availability of the apps I
Speaker 1: run on all these different devices, whether it's a computer
Speaker 1: or a mobile phone, a tablet, whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: More of those apps are tapping into lots of different
Speaker 1: aspects that a company is involved with. So a bank,
Speaker 1: for example, could have an app that allows you to
Speaker 1: access your bank account. You can make transfers, you can
Speaker 1: pay bills, you can check your reward status on any
Speaker 1: credit cards you might have, You might be able to
Speaker 1: apply for loans, and more. To the end user, it
Speaker 1: might seem like all that stuff just sort of lives
Speaker 1: in the brick and mortar building that the bank we
Speaker 1: use happens to be located in, But in reality, those
Speaker 1: services might be spread across numerous computer systems all over
Speaker 1: the place. Some of them might be on premises at
Speaker 1: the bank itself, some might be in a privately managed
Speaker 1: data center off site. Some might depend upon large cloud
Speaker 1: computing services run by big companies. So there's a whole
Speaker 1: variety out there now. As an end user, I just
Speaker 1: expect that stuff to work. I expect all those services
Speaker 1: to be integrated into the app seamlessly, and it's frustrating
Speaker 1: when that's not the case, right like when you try
Speaker 1: to do something and either there's a long wait time
Speaker 1: or it doesn't work the way you expected. But the
Speaker 1: cloud computer landscape it's a complicated one for reasons that
Speaker 1: we're going to get into in the discussions I had
Speaker 1: with Steve in a chef. So making this happen all
Speaker 1: the stuff working together isn't as easy as just inserting
Speaker 1: a few links between services. So let's get started. I
Speaker 1: began with what seems like a simple question but is
Speaker 1: actually fairly complicated. So I'm very pleased that I get
Speaker 1: to speak to two experts on this subject because about
Speaker 1: a decade ago I wrote more than a dozen articles
Speaker 1: all about the concept of cloud computing. Back then, cloud computing,
Speaker 1: at least for the mainstream, was just creeping into the
Speaker 1: public consciousness and there was a lot of confusion about it.
Speaker 1: And I think over the years everyone has a better
Speaker 1: and standing of what cloud computing is. But the problem
Speaker 1: is everyone has a different understanding of what cloud computing is.
Speaker 1: So can we talk about the definition of cloud computing
Speaker 1: and how that has actually evolved over time? Be happy
Speaker 1: to and I think you you again, you hit the
Speaker 1: nail on the head with regards to I think it's
Speaker 1: one of the most amorphous definitions out there. You ask anybody,
Speaker 1: I think they've got a different view. And I think
Speaker 1: around a period of time, at least in an IBM's view,
Speaker 1: is is that it's one that's continually redefining, and it's
Speaker 1: probably in a phase right now where it's being redefined
Speaker 1: as well. I think in most cases people originally assumed
Speaker 1: an associated cloud with the large public clouds, you know,
Speaker 1: the multi tenant hyper scalers and UH And it reminds
Speaker 1: me a little bit like the early days of the Internet.
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you go back to UH
Speaker 1: the Internet, you had extra net, you had internet, you
Speaker 1: had public Internet, you had private Internet, and before long
Speaker 1: you started to see most of the vendors start to
Speaker 1: rally around a small set of standards T C P
Speaker 1: I P H, T M L, and before long it
Speaker 1: just became the Internet. You know, you would serve up
Speaker 1: a U R L and you really didn't care where
Speaker 1: the server was that was serving up the content behind it.
Speaker 1: It could be in your data center, could be on
Speaker 1: go Daddy, could be wherever that uh, it could be
Speaker 1: in one country versus another. It just became the Internet.
Speaker 1: And I think that the cloud we're kind of ad
Speaker 1: that position to. I think the cloud is going to
Speaker 1: start to expand to be almost anywhere that I've got
Speaker 1: compute and data capabilities. And we've seen this this whole
Speaker 1: rally around a certain set of standards really driving that
Speaker 1: and driving that at a speed that's just unbelievable. Right now,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the adoption of lenox, I think
Speaker 1: the whole history of containers and the maturity of containers,
Speaker 1: which are you know, kind of you know, finer grained
Speaker 1: virtualization that allows me to to have code and move
Speaker 1: it around and pack the middlewhere into it, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: then finally kubernet ease that gives me the ability to
Speaker 1: orchestrate and manage those containers. Are kind of that becoming
Speaker 1: that Lingua franco. You know, I think we all of
Speaker 1: the major vendors are now kind of embracing those three standards.
Speaker 1: I think there's probably over forty to fifty different distros
Speaker 1: of coube today and that's now I think kind of
Speaker 1: turning it into cloud. I Can I do cloud in
Speaker 1: my data center? Sure, there's a lot of things I
Speaker 1: can do. I can run containers, I can run Kubernetes,
Speaker 1: I can build a p I S, I can have
Speaker 1: always on, I can do a lot of cloud native
Speaker 1: concepts right in the data center. Can I do a
Speaker 1: dedicated cloud that may be set up and assigned to
Speaker 1: a single client or a single customer. Yep. You now
Speaker 1: have been able to to do cloud concepts and put
Speaker 1: a single customer boundary around it as well. And then
Speaker 1: you've got the hyper scale ers that can do that
Speaker 1: for a wide range and never know where. You know,
Speaker 1: my my my machine, maybe in one data center one day,
Speaker 1: in one data center the next day. So I think
Speaker 1: all of this is becoming the cloud, and uh, I
Speaker 1: think within the next couple of years, cloud will be
Speaker 1: anywhere that I'm doing kind of cloud native properties independent
Speaker 1: of its its final locality here. And this has kind
Speaker 1: of been the real basis of some of the work
Speaker 1: you guys have been doing the red house strategy the right. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And you're write about the definition of cloud search changing, right,
Speaker 1: So from this notion of cloud computing is when it
Speaker 1: just happened on somebody else's computer, right or somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And you know, if we go back, right, if you
Speaker 1: can ask yourself, look, where were people's expectations of this frame, right?
Speaker 1: Were they in the P two P sharing? You know,
Speaker 1: if anyone remembers that, right, So there's notion of kind
Speaker 1: of you know, music sharing or streaming um or or
Speaker 1: even this notion that you had with regard to well
Speaker 1: I can get my email and that's being served over
Speaker 1: the internet. And then you know, people to equate the
Speaker 1: Internet to the cloud. And so I'll sort of taking
Speaker 1: people the different sort of you know, aspect of that
Speaker 1: from you, Steve, because I think people expectations for cloud
Speaker 1: competing we're also computing. We're also sort of shaped around
Speaker 1: being able to access software from anywhere they were, right,
Speaker 1: So in the past, WHEA was Hey, I'm locked down
Speaker 1: to particular desktop or particular laptop or machine write a
Speaker 1: physical location. And now you can say, well, I'm free
Speaker 1: now right now, I can you know, get my information
Speaker 1: wherever and you know, the same data I could get
Speaker 1: from a laptop. You know, I can be on the go,
Speaker 1: you know, hiking in Peru, and I can access at
Speaker 1: the same time too. Having said all that, I think
Speaker 1: also the definition of cloud or the sort of expectation
Speaker 1: cloud or sort of shifting to new areas right and
Speaker 1: to all call out around security and privacy. Increasingly we're finding,
Speaker 1: especially red hat, we're seeing customers sort of you know,
Speaker 1: talking about you know, inasmuch as a fine value from
Speaker 1: being able to take advantage of you know, deploying applications,
Speaker 1: running them, thinking avoute, all the new technologies you talked about.
Speaker 1: It's also about, you know, is this secure? You know,
Speaker 1: is this something you know, if I'm audited that I
Speaker 1: can kind of stand behind u, you know, is this
Speaker 1: complying with the regular lation and the governance of the
Speaker 1: particular region that I'm working with? And then ultimately, right
Speaker 1: are we making sure I think maybe you know you've
Speaker 1: talked about this before. Stay around gdp R or privacy
Speaker 1: or regulations that are put in place to ensure that
Speaker 1: when customers and you know, be the individual consumers, are
Speaker 1: actual enterprises, we're meeting the requirements that they've put in
Speaker 1: place to us as providers. This is a good spot
Speaker 1: for me to jump back in here and explain some
Speaker 1: basic concepts like containers and kuberneties. You may remember I
Speaker 1: did an episode not long ago about virtualization, and the
Speaker 1: concept of virtualization is to use software to create a
Speaker 1: virtual machine on top of an actual, real physical machine.
Speaker 1: And when I say machine, I'm really talking about computers.
Speaker 1: And there are lots of different reasons that you would
Speaker 1: want to build a virtual computer on top of a
Speaker 1: physical computer. You might want to have a virtual machine
Speaker 1: dedicated to running a specific application, for example, and you
Speaker 1: want it completely separated from any other process running on
Speaker 1: the physical hardware itself, and the application might not be
Speaker 1: so demanding that would take up all, or maybe even
Speaker 1: a significant amount of a physical machine's resources. So if
Speaker 1: you did decide I'm just going to buy a server
Speaker 1: and that server is just going to run this one app,
Speaker 1: even though the app only relies on maybe five percent
Speaker 1: of the server's processing power and storage, you would have
Speaker 1: a ton of computing power just sitting idle, essentially going
Speaker 1: to waste. Virtual machines give you the chance to run
Speaker 1: data centers more efficiently with less idle time. On computers,
Speaker 1: you could have multiple virtual machines on the same physical device,
Speaker 1: and that way you're maximizing the use of that physical
Speaker 1: hardware and you're minimizing downtime. This is increased efficiency, better savings.
Speaker 1: It just makes more sense. Containers are similar to virtualization
Speaker 1: in many ways. A container sits on top of an
Speaker 1: operating system on a computer, and containers hold all the
Speaker 1: components necessary to run some bit of code in isolation
Speaker 1: of everything else. And you can have multiple containers on
Speaker 1: the same machine, each in its own protected environment, on
Speaker 1: the same operating system, so you don't need a bunch
Speaker 1: of virtual machines on the same physical hardware. You could
Speaker 1: run containers on virtual machines, but you could also run
Speaker 1: containers just on a computer without the virtual machine and
Speaker 1: hypervisor layers, so there's no need to allocate resources to
Speaker 1: apps dynamically because the containers quote unquote contain everything needed
Speaker 1: to run that code. Moreover, it's easy to move those
Speaker 1: containers from environment to environment, so a developer builds the
Speaker 1: some app and puts it into a few containers. The
Speaker 1: different containers are specific parts of what that app does,
Speaker 1: and then it's very easy for the developer to move
Speaker 1: those containers over to a test environment and from there
Speaker 1: to a production environment or deployment to the cloud. You
Speaker 1: can think of containers as keeping things efficient and tidy,
Speaker 1: and they're called that because it's very much like the
Speaker 1: containers you would have in shipping. The whole idea is
Speaker 1: that you've standardized this and it's really easy to move
Speaker 1: it around to wherever it needs to go. Okay, but
Speaker 1: what is Kubernetes. Well, that's a system that's designed to
Speaker 1: manage the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It's
Speaker 1: not the only one out there. There are other strategies
Speaker 1: for doing this, but it's one that has become incredibly
Speaker 1: popular over the last few years. So an application might
Speaker 1: require the use of several containers. Kubernetes organizes containers for
Speaker 1: applications into groups called pods, nodes, and name spaces. That's
Speaker 1: going from the smallest to largest. So containers your basic unit.
Speaker 1: Then you have pods, the nodes, the name spaces. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get too much into the weeds here,
Speaker 1: because we get really kind of bogged down. But think
Speaker 1: of this as a way to coordinate all of these
Speaker 1: different containers so that the apps work the way they
Speaker 1: need to and you can easily poured it over to
Speaker 1: whatever environment you need to use. And the use of
Speaker 1: containers and orchestration strategies like Kubernetes is making it easier
Speaker 1: for developers to build and deploy apps that will work
Speaker 1: on any computing environment. All right, now, let's get back
Speaker 1: to my discussion with Stephen a chef. So for the
Speaker 1: average person, I think most people, if they hear about
Speaker 1: cloud computing, they're mostly thinking of public cloud applications. You
Speaker 1: think about cloud storage is probably the number one application
Speaker 1: that they think of us exactly. And then and then
Speaker 1: if they're thinking about the apps that they're running, they
Speaker 1: might have a little bit of appreciation about that as well.
Speaker 1: But I think a lot of people who aren't in
Speaker 1: that world, they hear terms like public cloud and private cloud,
Speaker 1: and that already starts to get a little confusing to them.
Speaker 1: So could you just for a moment kind of talk
Speaker 1: about the difference is what what are those entities and
Speaker 1: what would you use public cloud for versus private cloud.
Speaker 1: If you're let's say, I don't know a global corporation
Speaker 1: that has locations in the EU, for example, Yeah, let
Speaker 1: me do that. So and we'll try to break it
Speaker 1: down whereby we don't get so caught up in definitions
Speaker 1: that we miss the point of where we're trying to
Speaker 1: get to, right, which is um Historically, you know, we
Speaker 1: always dealt with this right. So we we've talked about,
Speaker 1: for example, data centers, and it could be your own
Speaker 1: data center that you managed, could be a third party
Speaker 1: that sort of managed it on your behalf. You might
Speaker 1: deploy some applications on your own, you might have someone
Speaker 1: else deploying on your behalf, and then you should go
Speaker 1: back and forth across them. Now, if you extend that
Speaker 1: out and then you say, well, you know what if
Speaker 1: we started having and I'm going to sort of take
Speaker 1: this if this sort of analogy to its logical conclusion.
Speaker 1: What if we now had a vast pool of compute,
Speaker 1: network and storage, right, and then we dev that up
Speaker 1: to say, some of it lives physically in a certain area,
Speaker 1: managed by a certain party, some live somewhere else managed
Speaker 1: by someone else. You can take advantage of economics. Because
Speaker 1: it shared, multiple parties can use it and then be
Speaker 1: able to say, well, I'll deploy now those applications that
Speaker 1: I have based on policies right now, those policies might
Speaker 1: be cost they might be based on latency, they could
Speaker 1: be based on performance, they might be based on you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about regulation, privacy and governance and so on,
Speaker 1: right and then in that sense, it doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: what we've called it. And this is why I think
Speaker 1: between a red hat and IBM and I think we
Speaker 1: share this vision. And I'm sure Steve you'd agree with
Speaker 1: this right that, you know, the hybrid cloud notion is,
Speaker 1: you know, really the abstraction that we can put in
Speaker 1: front of resources that can be made widely available to
Speaker 1: customers around the world, and then for us to now
Speaker 1: think about what productive things can they do on top
Speaker 1: of that, What new applications can they build? How can
Speaker 1: they integrate both exists stinging around as they have the
Speaker 1: new ones they wanted to build out, How can they
Speaker 1: create great agility and great innovation in vols? Jumping back
Speaker 1: in here again just to clear up a couple more things. So,
Speaker 1: why would a company want to keep some stuff on premises?
Speaker 1: Some in a private cloud and some on a public cloud. Well,
Speaker 1: it has to do with a lot of different stuff,
Speaker 1: including security, governance, and cost. All this data has to
Speaker 1: ultimately live on physical machines somewhere, and it costs money
Speaker 1: to buy and maintain those machines, and they take up
Speaker 1: physical space. So there are limiting factors, mostly money in space.
Speaker 1: The restrict how many computers are going to have in
Speaker 1: your physical location. Now, some stuff you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: keep close to you. Maybe you have some trade secrets
Speaker 1: that you're protecting. Maybe you have private data on customers
Speaker 1: that you don't want leaked out to anybody else. Maybe
Speaker 1: there are specific laws in place that state you have
Speaker 1: to keep certain information under your control and you alone
Speaker 1: are allowed to have access to it. Whatever the motivation.
Speaker 1: You may want some of your data and services running
Speaker 1: on equipment that your team directly manages, so you keep
Speaker 1: all that stuff on premises or on prem We talk
Speaker 1: a lot about the EU and this discussion, because the
Speaker 1: EU has strict rules about what data can and can't
Speaker 1: leave the continent, and in those cases, you have to
Speaker 1: make sure your system respects those restrictions. If you're doing
Speaker 1: business inside the EU, now, you might hire a third
Speaker 1: party to oversee servers running your apps, and that's all
Speaker 1: those particular servers are doing, right you. They aren't running
Speaker 1: any applications for any other client on those particular servers.
Speaker 1: They might all exist in a similar data center, but
Speaker 1: the machines you're using are quote unquote yours alone. You're
Speaker 1: essentially renting them. Your stuff is completely separated from anyone else's.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you've got some services you want to move
Speaker 1: to big public cloud providers, and those solutions might cost
Speaker 1: much less than running the machinery yourself, and the services
Speaker 1: guarantee redundancy. They have multiple machines holding onto your data,
Speaker 1: so if one set of servers go down, other servers
Speaker 1: with the same information can take their place, and this
Speaker 1: takes a lot of the management of that information off
Speaker 1: of your plate. So there are a lot of big
Speaker 1: companies that are using multiple cloud and on premises solutions
Speaker 1: to host their services and their data, and as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, that gets really complicated. Just knowing where stuff
Speaker 1: is is complicated, getting stuff to work together with each
Speaker 1: other on these different platforms is even more so, And
Speaker 1: so you have to figure out how to make all
Speaker 1: this data living in these different environments to play nice together,
Speaker 1: and that's where the concept of the hybrid cloud comes
Speaker 1: into play. Let's get back to Stephen Asches. So this
Speaker 1: kind of gets us into this concept of the hybrid
Speaker 1: cloud strategy. Can you talk a bit more about what
Speaker 1: that is and how that's going to benefit companies? That's
Speaker 1: sactly right. So the part that we sometimes skip over,
Speaker 1: and I think this is kind of you know, where
Speaker 1: hybrid really really shines is far that you know, Steve
Speaker 1: started talking about, right, And I think Steve, you're describing
Speaker 1: this as sort of the two phases, right, you know
Speaker 1: about you know, we're about of our way into the journey.
Speaker 1: We've got any percent to go? Why is that really important?
Speaker 1: It's almost like an iceberg, right, We've got so much
Speaker 1: more to do, and yet we only see the tip
Speaker 1: of what we've done now. If you don't think of
Speaker 1: the world, you know, in a hybrid fashion, when as
Speaker 1: a hybrid you know, I'm sort of gonna call out
Speaker 1: your right at uses a terminology call four footprints, right,
Speaker 1: running something in a physical environment, running something in the
Speaker 1: virtual environment virch your life environment, running it in a
Speaker 1: private cloud, running in a public cloud. If you don't
Speaker 1: have something that stands the four footprints? What are you
Speaker 1: doing right? You are potentially choosing to disregard that any
Speaker 1: percent that you haven't moved over where you can make
Speaker 1: it most productive. Why is it important? Most enterprises of
Speaker 1: any size have large investments in applications, services, processes, people's
Speaker 1: skills that they've made over decades. What happens to all
Speaker 1: of those? Right? And if we aren't able to unlock
Speaker 1: all of that, right, how can we truly deliver innovation
Speaker 1: and the scale that we want while leaving all that
Speaker 1: moroon on the side. Right, So the opportunity to able
Speaker 1: to say, look, I am going to be able to
Speaker 1: bridge you know, existing investments that I've made and I
Speaker 1: obviously worked with the clients you know for decades around this,
Speaker 1: but at the same time expose them to what we
Speaker 1: call you know, cloud native, you know ways of working. Right.
Speaker 1: There's notion of micro services. Right. Let me not build
Speaker 1: out massive applications. Let me build them in smaller and
Speaker 1: more actual fashion. Steeve talked about you and having a
Speaker 1: PI is available right to make it just easier for
Speaker 1: different applications to to interact each other and be able
Speaker 1: to share information data across them, but to be able
Speaker 1: to realize all that promise, and we've got to be
Speaker 1: able to provide a hybrid cloud platform that spans both
Speaker 1: the new environments that we're all trying to go towards
Speaker 1: as well as the existing applications and environment that we
Speaker 1: have running today. And I think it's an interesting case
Speaker 1: in point. Right when we announced the acquisition intent of
Speaker 1: red Hat, I had a ce IO executive VP of
Speaker 1: a large fast food restaurant chain called me up and
Speaker 1: he says, okay, Steve, give me the scoop. Why did
Speaker 1: you do it? And I had to tell him. I said, well,
Speaker 1: let's just take a look at what we're doing with you.
Speaker 1: And at that point in time, um, we were putting
Speaker 1: a server in every single one of those restaurants, were
Speaker 1: putting a private cloud in every single one of his restaurants,
Speaker 1: and what we were attaching that we were attaching our
Speaker 1: Watson services to do the ordering so that you just
Speaker 1: speak in but automatically handle it, etcetera, saving the labor
Speaker 1: on that, etcetera. We had also outfitted every one of
Speaker 1: his stores with IoT cameras, so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you see the bustload of high school students start to
Speaker 1: come in. He felt that if he had just a
Speaker 1: minute lead time, he could reposition his employees and be
Speaker 1: ready to take that that that on and manage the
Speaker 1: traffic of that. You know, those two applications resided, and
Speaker 1: we're critical just to that store. They didn't benefit from
Speaker 1: bouncing or sending any data back up to their data
Speaker 1: center or to the public cloud. They all the processing
Speaker 1: etcetera needed to happen right there in the store. I said,
Speaker 1: that's your private cloud. I said, Now that same store
Speaker 1: also has to order from you, do your supply chain,
Speaker 1: do your analytics, do your HR, get your paychecks, etcetera.
Speaker 1: All that and you know, so that's coming back into
Speaker 1: your worldwide headquarters, and that's probably running in conjunction with
Speaker 1: historical applications that you have, and probably some dedicated cloud
Speaker 1: capabilities is there. And I said, and we're also working
Speaker 1: with your marketing department on kind of running your annual
Speaker 1: sweep stakes game and doing your customer loyalty etcetera. You
Speaker 1: want to reach as many as people across as many
Speaker 1: channels as possible. That's your public cloud, and that's what
Speaker 1: you're doing as well. I said. I said, now imagine
Speaker 1: in architecture, so your programmers could build that once and
Speaker 1: they could then deploy that in all three of those
Speaker 1: environments seamlessly, so you didn't have to know ahead of
Speaker 1: time where that application was going to run. You know,
Speaker 1: let's just imagine that all of a sudden, speeds came up.
Speaker 1: You know, all of a sudden, we're doing five G
Speaker 1: I can I can move those private cloud applications back
Speaker 1: to a center location do that more efficiently. A single
Speaker 1: architecture gives the ability to write at once, run it
Speaker 1: anywhere that I want to. We're starting to future proof
Speaker 1: those applications as well. So a hybrid cloud strategy is
Speaker 1: one that has a layer that facilitates operations across different
Speaker 1: computer environments. In an ideal version of the hybrid cloud strategy,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't matter where your data and services lived. The
Speaker 1: hybrid cloud infrastructure would create the connections necessary for services
Speaker 1: to run without any hiccups and give developers opportunities to
Speaker 1: build new applications without having to worry about some services
Speaker 1: or information being off limits. It's just sort of meant
Speaker 1: to smooth everything out and pave the way for more interoperability.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to Stephen the chef, So can you
Speaker 1: talk to me a little bit about IBM S multi
Speaker 1: cloud platform and what that means to businesses. I think
Speaker 1: we early on decided that, you know, no firm or
Speaker 1: no enterprise is going to be wed to a single cloud,
Speaker 1: much much to the chagrine of the public cloud vendors.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, you know, we're starting to hear from
Speaker 1: some of the analysts calling it a mono cloud, you know,
Speaker 1: where they're trying to you know, build either outposts or
Speaker 1: build you know some some some code that replicates their
Speaker 1: public cloud down into the data center. Uh so it's
Speaker 1: more easy to go up to their public cloud. But
Speaker 1: we did a lot of work. We've done a lot
Speaker 1: of interviews with enterprise customers, and you know, they are
Speaker 1: not going to be wed to a single vendor. You know,
Speaker 1: we we learned back from the our our prior days
Speaker 1: of working with them over the past decades. Nobody likes
Speaker 1: lock in. Everybody wants choice, and I think many of
Speaker 1: them are attracted to certain clouds based off unique capability
Speaker 1: and unique functions associated with those. Some of those may
Speaker 1: maybe cost oriented, management oriented, but you're starting to see
Speaker 1: some very unique services that are pretty much went to
Speaker 1: a single cloud as well. So we made the determination
Speaker 1: that we wanted to be one of the few vendors
Speaker 1: that could really tackle a multi cloud problem. And we
Speaker 1: could have done two things. We've taken our stack and
Speaker 1: custom fit it to every single cloud that's out there,
Speaker 1: plus build our own tremendous private cloud infrastructure. Or could
Speaker 1: we look at at a fabric that could be consistent
Speaker 1: across these multiple environments. And this what attracted us to
Speaker 1: our early work that we had done with Kubernetes, and
Speaker 1: then again we were we were you know, it was
Speaker 1: a tremendous ory. Maybe a chef tell the whole story
Speaker 1: on open Shift as well, but but that was unlike
Speaker 1: anything we had seen. And red Hat both brought that
Speaker 1: fabric to the table for us. And then they already
Speaker 1: had you know, deep relationships with all the public cloud
Speaker 1: vendors itself that you know, we would have taken us
Speaker 1: years to develop that. So we felt that this would
Speaker 1: give us tremendous acceleration. Use that beautiful foundation, that fabric
Speaker 1: and their multi cloud relationships, and then all we had
Speaker 1: to do was right on top of that and we
Speaker 1: start to fulfill out our We start to fill out
Speaker 1: our overall multiploud story very rapidly here yes to to
Speaker 1: add towards perceived cetera, which is which is great And
Speaker 1: I think this is a truly a great partnership that
Speaker 1: we put together between Red and IBM. That the platform
Speaker 1: that you know, we've built that that IBM has taken
Speaker 1: into account here and then it's going to build out
Speaker 1: further an ad additional services on top. UM. The foundation
Speaker 1: of that is Linux. And then for the folks who
Speaker 1: for all the technology they know, Linus is the foundation
Speaker 1: of you know, pretty much every significant platform that's running
Speaker 1: out there today, but has been building that for twenty
Speaker 1: years UM. And what we decided was to say, well,
Speaker 1: how can we now think about while Linux was the
Speaker 1: best platform for running applications in traditional data centers, what
Speaker 1: would be the right platform for running these applications in
Speaker 1: a hybrid line environment. And the lesson that we learned
Speaker 1: in building this operating system that's running mission critical applications
Speaker 1: really all around the world, UM, and then build the
Speaker 1: next platform on it, and that's open Shift UM. And
Speaker 1: the journey we've taken, you know, for that is to
Speaker 1: really evolve that from initially being you know, a platform
Speaker 1: we say, well, it's an a pinated platform for specific
Speaker 1: sense of developers to really being one that we can
Speaker 1: say is now serving a multitude applications. So whether you're
Speaker 1: trying to run reservation systems, whether you're thinking about building
Speaker 1: your next gent you know, web application, whether you're thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, building software that you can stand up and
Speaker 1: run and serve to other customers in the cloud, you
Speaker 1: can now build with this same technology and sticking advantages
Speaker 1: some of the concepts that Steve Leader earlier, and there's
Speaker 1: notions of you know, containers or Kuberneties, which has contained orchestration,
Speaker 1: which has now become industry standards, and so being able
Speaker 1: to now have this well called really is the industry
Speaker 1: standard platform right now, we're serving over a thousand applications
Speaker 1: customers today running these applications that scale along with IBM S.
Speaker 1: Ability to be able to now deploy this hybrid multi
Speaker 1: cloud platform in front of it's thousands of customers, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's an extremely powerful value proposition that related
Speaker 1: in front of customers. Steve and A Chees have mentioned
Speaker 1: Linux a few times. Lenox is an operating system, meaning
Speaker 1: it's the software that acts as a liaison between programs
Speaker 1: and the computer hardware that makes stuff you know actually
Speaker 1: happen on computers. And Linux is an open source operating
Speaker 1: system with an enormous community of developers. There are numerous
Speaker 1: versions of Linux out there, and they're referred to as
Speaker 1: distros or distributions. They all share the same basic DNA,
Speaker 1: but they have different user interfaces and a few other
Speaker 1: unique aspects to each distribution. Computers running Linux make up
Speaker 1: about nine of the workload in the public cloud, and
Speaker 1: a big reason for that is the open source nature
Speaker 1: of Linux. Because the code is open, anyone can look
Speaker 1: at it. Anyone can take that code and make their
Speaker 1: own version or distribution of Linux. Anyone can look for
Speaker 1: ways to improve how it works, or search out vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: and patch them. Now that's true with open source software
Speaker 1: in general, and it's why open source projects can evolve
Speaker 1: rapidly with a strong enough community contributing to those projects.
Speaker 1: All right, back to the conversation. The next thing I
Speaker 1: want to talk about is something that I think is
Speaker 1: almost synonymous with red hat. It's another two word phrase,
Speaker 1: that being open source. And you know red hat and
Speaker 1: IBM both have done incredible work around open source. I
Speaker 1: know that for my listeners. That sometimes comes as a
Speaker 1: surprise to hear about ibm s involvement in it. That's
Speaker 1: not frequently a name that they would associated with it.
Speaker 1: But I've been to IBM think a couple of times.
Speaker 1: My eyes have been Yeah, it was definitely But yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk about open source for a bit. Why why
Speaker 1: is that so important? Specifically? Why is it going to
Speaker 1: be critical in this world where we're looking at this
Speaker 1: this cloud infrastructure for various services in different industries. Yes,
Speaker 1: so open sources at the beating hard. It's in the
Speaker 1: d n A, you know, use whatever way you want
Speaker 1: to describe it, you know, for red hat, but has
Speaker 1: been since its earliest days, right, it's has been in
Speaker 1: two decades. Everything that we do with red hat is open, right,
Speaker 1: there's no code that we keep behind. Everything shed out
Speaker 1: of the community. Why do we do that. We've believed
Speaker 1: in that from the earliest days, right, that the greatest
Speaker 1: amount of innovation that will happen will happen out in
Speaker 1: the open um. And and that, by the way, it's
Speaker 1: proven true. Right. So if you look at the basis
Speaker 1: of you know, critical infrastructure, you look at the base
Speaker 1: is of you know, what you see on security, emerging
Speaker 1: technologies like blog chain. You see, uh, innovation that's been
Speaker 1: happening in big data everything is founded on the base
Speaker 1: of open source. That's because also large corporations, you know,
Speaker 1: whether they be providers technology or consumers technology, have started understanding,
Speaker 1: you know, you cannot innovate as well within your own
Speaker 1: sort of for virtual walls of an organization versus being
Speaker 1: able to unlock a global community of innovation. Right, So
Speaker 1: this notion of crowdsource, saying, this notion of collaboration, you
Speaker 1: know how it is that you sort of want to
Speaker 1: think about it. You know, we've always believed that there's
Speaker 1: much more value that you can generate, right when you've
Speaker 1: got hundreds of thousands of eyes looking at something, right
Speaker 1: versus you know, something that's just a small fraction of that.
Speaker 1: So so that's one aspect, right, which is if you
Speaker 1: you can call the philosophical belief, you can call it
Speaker 1: that you know, are sort of you know, a commitment
Speaker 1: that that's that's the way innovation must happen. Went forward,
Speaker 1: um another side of that, right, he said, it's a
Speaker 1: smart decision for customers, right if you're concerned about lock
Speaker 1: in and by the way, which customer isn't What better
Speaker 1: way you know, to be able to avoid that or
Speaker 1: minimize that then to rely on open source technologies. Right
Speaker 1: If your provider, your your vendor isn't delivering the technology
Speaker 1: and the way you wanted to the quality or the
Speaker 1: price that you wanted, now you have the ability to
Speaker 1: go switch out to someone else who's building on that basis.
Speaker 1: And so you know, in that way also you know,
Speaker 1: we think there's great value that's created for customers. It
Speaker 1: also keeps us on its right. It keeps us as
Speaker 1: a company always sort of looking to say, how can
Speaker 1: we contially deliver value for for the for the price
Speaker 1: that that we're charging U customers. And then finally, what
Speaker 1: this also does, right is creates you know, what will
Speaker 1: call a sort of open standards, right ways for different
Speaker 1: organizations to come together to collaborate and start you know, deciding, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the best way for to essentially get a commonality.
Speaker 1: What often happened in technology, and Steve probably knows this
Speaker 1: as well as I do, is that moment different choices
Speaker 1: get made right now, enterprises are forced to pick one path,
Speaker 1: they pick the wrong path. They're now going down, you know,
Speaker 1: a road which will become a dead end. So right,
Speaker 1: if you've got you know, a coalescing of companies around,
Speaker 1: you know, open source and open standards, then they have
Speaker 1: a lot more confidence. Hey, I can build applications, I
Speaker 1: can build services on top of that, and of course
Speaker 1: that will make sure that you know, I have something
Speaker 1: that's vibrant and that's something that has a long life.
Speaker 1: I think Steve we called the future. I love those answers.
Speaker 1: I mean h I I have often referred to open
Speaker 1: source versus having the more closed off approach. If you
Speaker 1: have the closed off approach, you can hire the smartest
Speaker 1: people you can run into, but you can only fit
Speaker 1: so many of the room, right, But an open source
Speaker 1: you have access to all the smartest people in all
Speaker 1: the rooms. So that's a I fully on board on
Speaker 1: the open source train. That's I think that that's where
Speaker 1: we see not just rapid innovation, but we see that
Speaker 1: rapid response when something hasn't gone right because we all
Speaker 1: know that sometimes in software, something there's a vulnerability that
Speaker 1: someone didn't know, or maybe someone builds something new that
Speaker 1: breaks something old. When you have that community there, they
Speaker 1: recognize that so quickly and are able to respond so
Speaker 1: much more nimbly than an in house team typically could that.
Speaker 1: I've been a big proponent of it, so it's it's
Speaker 1: good to see this. I think you're exactly right, and
Speaker 1: I think just case in point, I think somebody was
Speaker 1: doing some pin testing against the Kubernetes code out there
Speaker 1: and a few vulnerabilities were found. They were patched almost
Speaker 1: within days. Look at a commercial software vendor. I was
Speaker 1: involved in starting up the security division at IBM, and
Speaker 1: we used to track with our our X force work
Speaker 1: as to how long it took a commercial vendor to
Speaker 1: patch some of their code. You're talking years if ever
Speaker 1: in some of these cases the speeds unbelievable. Here, well,
Speaker 1: this lets me transition the chef to a question for you.
Speaker 1: Red hat is known for its platform neutrality, for its independence.
Speaker 1: It's been called the Switzerland of i T Switzerland and
Speaker 1: our our board discussions all this. It was there from
Speaker 1: day one. So with that in mind, what steps are
Speaker 1: are you taking over a red hat to to kind
Speaker 1: of ensure that in this new era, how do you
Speaker 1: make certain that this thing that red hat has been
Speaker 1: known for is protected and preserved and grown. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: answer from my perspective, and then it'd be great to
Speaker 1: hear from from Steve because then he can tell you
Speaker 1: what steps IBM take, because that's not like, look what
Speaker 1: we've got a saying I think a red hat and
Speaker 1: it's probably true at IBM as well. Um, you know
Speaker 1: red hat is still red hat? What does that mean?
Speaker 1: That means that a big part of our value and
Speaker 1: I being fully recognizes this right as as it should
Speaker 1: have been, you know, going to the process to get
Speaker 1: approvals due to make this accosition happened. A big part
Speaker 1: of our value is to be you know, as you
Speaker 1: describe you in Switzerland or neutral or the commonality. You know,
Speaker 1: you use the word of choice that you want. Um,
Speaker 1: we firmly believe in that. Right. So whether it's for
Speaker 1: us to work with let's say Amazon or Microsoft or
Speaker 1: Google or any of the other you know, large providers
Speaker 1: or other partners right like HP or Dell, emerging companies.
Speaker 1: You know, a big part of what we do right
Speaker 1: is to be able to work with these companies, have
Speaker 1: commercial relationships with them also collaborative community with them. Right.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes you know those two work together really well,
Speaker 1: and other times, you know, we have to sort of
Speaker 1: make sure that we balance across them right to sort
Speaker 1: of keep keep terms consistent and fair. Um, so our
Speaker 1: focus really is that we're going down that path and
Speaker 1: we're want to continue going on that path. We haven't
Speaker 1: really changed any of that. Of course, you know that
Speaker 1: with the opportunity with the IBM is to be able
Speaker 1: to go and avail our customers with with with you know,
Speaker 1: a lot greater reach than than we've had before. But
Speaker 1: that independs that we had the broad ecosystem that we've
Speaker 1: cultivated of providers of partners around the world. We continue
Speaker 1: to work with it and so you know, oftentimes when
Speaker 1: the questions that comes back, you know, my response, I
Speaker 1: don't want it to sound glibe, is to say business
Speaker 1: as usual. Right, We've worked in a certain way. It's
Speaker 1: been reasonably successful, we'd like to believe, and we want
Speaker 1: to keep continue going on that. All Right, It's been
Speaker 1: several weeks since red Hat and IBM came together, and
Speaker 1: the question is is the honeymoon over? How have things been,
Speaker 1: how's the transition going? What have you learned so far?
Speaker 1: I just really started this last year even started well,
Speaker 1: it's been a whirlwind. Right, So, so the the good
Speaker 1: news that wasn't surprised exactly working looking through it for
Speaker 1: a while. UM, I think maybe what the surprice sing
Speaker 1: part has been is that there is so much more
Speaker 1: in common than we thought there was. What do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? It's you know, IBM has invested in
Speaker 1: so you've talked about this, you know, the commitment to Linux,
Speaker 1: the long relationship that I've been read at has had.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of work that's happened from an engineering perspective,
Speaker 1: collaboration over the years that we had in place. UM. So,
Speaker 1: you know, just this sort of notion of hey, we're
Speaker 1: actually working with you know, people that many parts of
Speaker 1: the company have worked with in the past, you know,
Speaker 1: has been good. UM. I think also the realization on
Speaker 1: both sides to respect you know, both parties, if you will,
Speaker 1: culture and heritage right. You know, I've been honestly as
Speaker 1: a long storied one, but all the work that we've
Speaker 1: done with Steve and his team and you know the
Speaker 1: large Organs organization general, you know, has been extremely positive.
Speaker 1: I think you know, both parties have now done work
Speaker 1: them essentially established. You know, we're all called, for lack
Speaker 1: of better describe them, you know, offices within sales organization,
Speaker 1: the products team to interface with IBM um and so
Speaker 1: you know, every person right that doesn't feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: I've got to engage with it doesn't voc from IBM
Speaker 1: and vice versa. You know, we have some you know,
Speaker 1: sort of processes to be able to do that, and
Speaker 1: I think that's important, right because you know, we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about red Hat still being red Hat,
Speaker 1: you know, the business that we're pursuing, the work that
Speaker 1: we turned to, the neutrality that you know we wanted
Speaker 1: to keep in place as we go forward and do that,
Speaker 1: and so it's important for all that to happen. So
Speaker 1: we've seen all of that and I think that's been great.
Speaker 1: We've also seen the ability, you know, for us to
Speaker 1: reach out to customers to have different conversations. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I was getting pulled into conversations with some customers you know,
Speaker 1: who we've never previously engaged with, mostly because they said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we worked very closely with IBM, and the
Speaker 1: CIO of the large insurance organization said, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: love for you and your teams to come up and
Speaker 1: meet with us and talk about you know, what we've done. Well,
Speaker 1: that's opening up new things and more and more of
Speaker 1: you know, when that happens, right, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a great level of comfort within Red Hat to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was really good. So it's one hand to sort
Speaker 1: of think it and the other hand to kind of
Speaker 1: see it and say, you know, our culture is in place,
Speaker 1: the way we're working is in place, and neutrality in place,
Speaker 1: and independence is in place, and and their new and
Speaker 1: bigger opportunities. So I think that's good. You know, we
Speaker 1: we had this concept better together. You know, let's let's
Speaker 1: kind of I think one of the biggest fears is
Speaker 1: we turned four hundred thousand people of IBM loose on
Speaker 1: on Red Hat. And yeah, I've have probably spent over
Speaker 1: half of my career in acquisitions at IBM, from Lotus
Speaker 1: to Rational to multiple security companies, etcetera. And I've seen
Speaker 1: both the good and I've seen the bad and the
Speaker 1: nice thing. I think we worked very closely together during
Speaker 1: the closing period as to putting the right type of
Speaker 1: gates in place so that you know, the right discussions
Speaker 1: could be had at the right time. But there wasn't
Speaker 1: this full inundation of activity from from both sides. I mean,
Speaker 1: it can be a little overwhelming some sometimes, but again
Speaker 1: you know this, uh you know, buying a strong growth
Speaker 1: company that had had sixties plus quarters worth of double
Speaker 1: digit growth, we were very dependent on them just doing
Speaker 1: what they're doing as well. But suggestion, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we've been doing a lot of account planning right now.
Speaker 1: I think you see a lot of excitement between the
Speaker 1: two teams. A lot of things we could not talk
Speaker 1: about pre clothes that we're now able to talk about,
Speaker 1: so we can now actually you know, share information that
Speaker 1: we have on our customer sets, who has water new opportunities.
Speaker 1: And I think the teams are just overly excited as
Speaker 1: we kind of look at some of the first key
Speaker 1: accounts that we're jointly just looking at to see how
Speaker 1: can we serve them better? And and I think we're
Speaker 1: getting a lot of excitement back from our client basi
Speaker 1: as well. So we're excited. I don't think we're you know,
Speaker 1: we're not. We're keeping our eyes open to look for
Speaker 1: friction points as we move forward. I think we've got
Speaker 1: some good mechanisms in place to address those fairly quick. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, we're doing this podcast from the Red Hat building.
Speaker 1: You still see red Hat on top associate the logo
Speaker 1: in the front. We're not changing anything as well, so
Speaker 1: this whole independence, this Switzerland red hat is still red hat.
Speaker 1: You know. We're taking that very serious. And there's a
Speaker 1: few x i BMRs on the red Hat side they're like, Wow,
Speaker 1: you guys are really taking this serious, and I think
Speaker 1: that's reflecting in a lot of comments. I want to
Speaker 1: thank IBM and red Hat for having me out to
Speaker 1: Raleigh to talk about this partnership and what it means now. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: their goal is to create a service that lets other
Speaker 1: companies build better apps for end users, whether that's folks
Speaker 1: like me and you, or other companies or even just
Speaker 1: people within that organization itself. So IBM and red hat
Speaker 1: are building out the stuff that makes other people's stuff work,
Speaker 1: in other words, and it can be difficult to get
Speaker 1: an appreciation for that. I know that I've been guilty
Speaker 1: at looking at the surface level of a service or
Speaker 1: an app and not really taking into consideration what's required
Speaker 1: to you know, actually work. So this gave me a
Speaker 1: deeper appreciation of that, and frankly, I'm excited to see
Speaker 1: where this goes, because it could mean that the sort
Speaker 1: of things that you and I interact with on a
Speaker 1: daily basis, whether it's an app program on our desktops
Speaker 1: or laptops. Maybe it's Internet of Things related, could be
Speaker 1: a service that we don't even realize is connected to
Speaker 1: the cloud. All of those can become more robust, more
Speaker 1: feature rich, that can work better. We get a fewer vulnerabilities,
Speaker 1: fewer hiccups. That's the ideal, uh future that we could see,
Speaker 1: and I'm really hoping that that's what we get. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: if it works well, we probably won't even think about it.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the way things work, and we know
Speaker 1: that everything's going well if that happens. So thanks again
Speaker 1: to IBM and red Hat. Thank you guys for listening.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this bonus episode of tech Stuff
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.