Red Hat's Stu Miniman - CTO Advisor Road Trip Interview
Transcript
(upbeat music) (car engine starting) >> Hey, Keith Townsend, principal of the CTO Advisor. Welcome to another CTO dose on the road on the CTO Advisor road trip. Stu, this is a change of pace. >> Yeah, Keith, welcome to Massachusetts. >> One, I'm in Massachusetts, and two, I'm interviewing you. I don't think this has ever happened. I don't think I've ever interviewed you. >> Yeah, Why was I never on your podcast or anything like that? I mean, come on, Keith.
>> Keith: I'm not.. >> How many times did I have you on the program? >> And of course we did lots >> You had me on the program >> We did lots of stuff with the cube together. >> We did a lot of stuff in the cube together. >> Great. Great to see you and Melissa and the beautiful Airstream and you're, you're, your traveling road show. >> You know what the, a kind couple right before we hit record came and helped me with the awning.
You can't see the awning out of, out of a shot but awnings and Airstreams go hand-in-hand and like just the number one trouble with the rig. So, you've been at red hat for eight months. Tell me how has becoming a Linux expert goin'? (laughs together) >> (Keith continues laughing) >> Yeah, so unfortunately I failed at that. (Keith still laughing) >> So yes, you know, I joined back October, 2020. Joined Red Hat, I'm in the cloud group. So yes, if you dig down underneath all of our software Linux is there it's hugely important Red Hat has been doing that for multiple decades, but I personally wouldn't say I've gone any further on my Linux journey.
My programming days are far beyond me. I did pick up my AWS CCP, >> Keith: Nice! you know right around the time that I transitioned jobs something that was just, you know, how it is. It's like, I've been meaning for years to do that to actually get hands on with the cloud. I figured if I talked about it for so many years I should actually have gone in and, and use some of that. So that was fun to actually be able to play and do some hands-on piece.
But no, I mean, on the cloud group, my title is Director of Market Insights, but having a lot of fun with that team our customers, the ecosystem, which I know real well. >> So we're going to get some insights from you on the show. I've morphed from, and this is in a I don't want to focus too much on Kubernetes because Kubernetes like Linux will eventually disappear. I want to talk about the vision of when Kubernetes disappears and customers get the goodness of why IBM bought Red Hat, which is for Cloud.
>> Yeah >> Talk to me about what vision are customers coming to you with and where you helping customers to see where the cloud will go? >> Yeah, well, Keith, I like actually that you set it up with like Linux, it will disappear. So Linux of course, the foundation of what Red Hat does >> Right >> We made, you know, Linux for the enterprise and still has a robust thriving business where lots of people use it because yes, there's lots of Linux out there, >> Keith: Right >> but what is the trusted used Linux by you know, customers out there?
It is Red Hat Enterprise. >> And, and when I say disappear, I mean, this is not something that we think about. We just take it for granted. Like when I deploy a new data center or a new set of services, I'm not generally the pouring that on windows server or some other OS, it's Linux. And, and for me an enterprise, it's going to be Red Hat Linux because, why not? >> Yeah, absolutely Keith, and it is a perfect example because we've been working for years with the cloud providers to bring that REL across every environment.
And I tell you I personally even had the misconception of, okay Kubernetes is going to be everywhere. It's going to be baked in. I shouldn't have to think about it. And the analogy is similar to what happened with Linux is okay, who actually focuses on security? Who builds together the full offering and can make this a platform that really I can build and maintain my applications and do everything there. Well, that's the big focus of what we have at Red Hat.
And we really feel is differentiated compared to what others do, which is, yeah, I've got Kubernetes it's this thin layer. I do some other things, but it's just part of our overall you know, cloud or hypervisor or anything like that. We have a clear focus on what we're doing and have helped thousands of customers to deploy this because it really is the message Red Hat has been having for over a decade. It's hybrid and "hybrid"? It's funny. I actually went through this, this thought I'd love your opinion on this Keith is, you know when you think about hybrid, you're like, ah, hybrid was like the middle thing that I wasn't quite sure it was.
>> Keith: Right. >> Was this a halfway point, John FERF in the cube used to say is it a halfway house on your way to the public cloud? We know everything in IT is always additive. There's my data center. There's hosted environments. There's public cloud, there's SAS. Edge is now, you know, growing massively. So when I look at my applications when I look at my infrastructure, when I look at my teams and skills sets, all of those are hybrid today and they're going to be even more hybrid in the future.
>> And I've talked to enough people now. And I've experienced this, myself that one, everything in enterprise IT is additive, is going to be cloud and or Kubernetes and there is no point where there's not going to be hybrid. Take a snapshot in time from five years ago to now, one of the things I like to pick on like the edge G folks who say you have to be all cloud all the time. Well, let's take a look at some people who built stuff eight years ago.
Are they re-platforming the stuff that they built eight years ago on Lambda today? Or have they just moved forward? And that they have the stuff that they built eight years ago and the stuff that they're building today? They have all the things. So it's just a reality of the snapshot. I talked to the folks at Walmart labs who were early open stack and deep open stack proponents. And I asked, well, where's your open stack? They said, it's right here next to our Kubernetes stuff.
It is the that's about as hybrid as you can get. >> Oh. And that Walmart team, by the way I remember interviewing them years ago you know what part of their stack too? Is Global ZOS, that's where they were actually their earliest container usage was on the mainframe. So you want to talk about that diversity? Yes, absolutely. I've got everything. I always joke, you know, we support A to Z that your Azure and your AWS all the way through your VM ware and your Z series.
So, you know, all your latest, coolest new stuff and you know, more, more legacy environments. Absolutely. >> So talk to me about hybrid. Like what part of the CTO buys a hybrid infrastructure and that whole experiment is about making hybrid real. I understand conceptually that I have my old stuff. I understand conceptually I have the new stuff. Some of that is going to be Kubernetes on premises. Some of it's going to be public cloud services. You talked about your AWS certification, like in reality, where are our customers landing?
Where are there, why are they finding themselves in this hybrid journey? >> Well, one of the challenges I've had Keith, is we need to kind of get out of, you know, for myself. And I know you've got some background on this is the kind of the infrastructure mindset. >> Keith: Right >> It was, you know, I built physical servers. I went to virtual machines. I started looking at containers. What do we need? I need my operations team. I need my development team.
I need my security team. If we can give them some consistency where they live that's going to go a long way. We know that the toughest thing moving from one environment to another is my skillset, the tools that we're using. So, you know, that's when we talk to customers, we talk about hybrid cloud, but what they care about is, you know, my application stacks and what am I building new? What am I modernizing? What is staying in the old way and who has to manage that environment?
How do I make sure that my developers have the agility they need so that they don't have to wait around for things. We can always move faster, and security, we need to have consistent security around the environments. You know, security is always, you know, top of mind for for customers and, you know, huge investment in this. So when you talk to the customers they're all going through this transformation, you know could say digital transformation, whatever you want, but it is, you know, what, what is the business need?
and how does IT deliver on that and going through and making sure that I can respond with new things. I can maintain what I have and hopefully pulling some things forward at whatever pace that makes sense for that business because sometimes it's, I need to move really fast. And other times it's, you know there are certain things that I can keep this way for a while and therefore I just need to lower costs on it. and, and keep my people going. >> So last question, Red Hat, even the 34 billion dollars that IBM paid for it, can't do this all by themselves.
They can't take a journey, They can't take a customer on the full journey. Talk to me about the ecosystem, and some of the most important partnerships. >> Yeah, absolutely Keith and you know, the high level message for the company is open hybrid cloud. So of course, open source, core to what we do at Red Hat and a big piece of that it's community and that ecosystem. So there's open APIs, there's communities working on things. When we build an OpenShift, we always say, it's batteries are included, but swappable.
So, you know, if there is some storage solution you want that's not what we offer. Absolutely. You can use that. There's, there's lots of places in the stack where you might choose a tool or solution outside of what we offer. When you talk about the most important partnerships you know, I have to start with the cloud providers. We've had a multi-year partnership with Microsoft. Those of us that have been around awhile, still, you know go like, wait, wait, Microsoft >> Keith: Right >> and Red Hat?
You know, on keynote stages together, shaking hands doing all that, hugely important. We've got lots of customers using our solution which is in Azure and Amazon. We've grown our partnership with AWS for many years earlier this year we have the native public cloud offering. It's AWS helped named it. It's Red Hat OpenShift service on AWS, or it's ROSA. I always joke, you know, ROSA and Alexa are having a little chat here and there. (Keith laughing) So those are majorly important, as well as all the companies that are helping customers with those migrations and journeys.
So the systems integrators, including there's a very large service organization with a three letter word paid 34 billion for Red, oh yeah. IBM Global Services absolutely is a big piece you know, IBM from a Red Hat standpoint, you know we always look at IBM is they're a very important partner but one of the many that we work with, so the, SIS like the Accenture's, Eli's Deloitte, the world you know, some of those folks. >> Keith: I know some of those folks >> Yeah.
So, you know, and we're always looking to grow that ecosystem. You know, Red Hat is very much focused on the community. So more people that are going to contribute create new projects that contribute to communities. We're always looking in supporting that kind of environment. >> Stu, I appreciate you being on the CTO dose coming all the way down to normally farms. I think, it wasn't that big of a thing for you just a couple of miles down the road as some type of sports ball team that won two or three championships.
U on the Twitters. com/road-trip. If you want to DM me and challenge what either me or Stu brought up or co-sign it. DM's are open @CTOAdvisor on Twitter. Talk to you next, CTO dose.
