Big Data Update with Steve Watt, Chief Architect

Q: Intro: Steve Watt Red Hat Chief Architect, Hadoop and Big Data

A: Background with HP and IBM. Always been on cutting edge. When I came to Red Hat I thought, "What does Red Hat have to do with Big Data, and why do they want me to join?" Now I know there's a ton of big data stuff happening. Very cool projects.

Q: Can you tell us about some of those projects.

A: We offer value to customers at multiple layers in the stack. Obviously RHEL is the OS layer of choice for most data centers and internet companies. Then you have Storage (plugin) and OpenStack (IaaS). On top of that OpenShift (PaaS). But more importantly it's our partnerships that is important to customers.

Q: What do you mean? Can you elaborate?

A: Most vendors you talk to about big data will talk about a "stack". At Red Hat, open and open source are burned into our DNA. We know customers want to build best of breed solutions for themselves by using the best pieces for a particular task, rather than get locked into a "stack" that has some pieces that are optimal but sadly most pieces that are not optimal for a particular workload. Our approach is to build open components that can seamlessly work with other third party software and hardware. e.g. Splunk, Intel, Cloudera, Hortonworks, Continuum, Lucidworks, SAP etc.

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about what to expect from Red Hat's Big Data position in 2015?

A: More partnerships. More around OpenStack, Storage and Middleware. More thought leadership. Also, be sure to bookmark enterprisersproject.com and redhat.com/bigdata for regular updates.

Learn More

For more detail about innovative projects Red Hat is involved in, hit up these links:

Click here to learn more about Hortonworks Data Platform 2.1 on Red Hat Storage 3.0.2

Click here to learn about our Hadoop plug-in refresh and the Ambari project.