Friday Five — September 30, 2016

Red Hat announced the availability of the Ansible Tower App for Splunk, an application that integrates Ansible Tower by Red Hat with Splunk^® Enterprise and Splunk Cloud. The application brings the power and variety of Splunk analytics queries to Ansible Tower automation, and enables Ansible Tower and Splunk customers to view rich Ansible automation data in Splunk solutions where it can be correlated with other data sources throughout the application delivery lifecycle, providing new levels of operational intelligence. The Ansible Tower App for Splunk enables customers to more deeply analyze the data generated by Ansible Tower automations and generate customized reports. These reports can then be shared between teams to facilitate operational decisions and activities.

The factor that previously slowed the acceptance of open source storage was that it involved so much more DIY. ... Open-source storage isn't so easy. For a start, most users will already have storage that they know and trust and, more importantly, which already has their data on it. Switching storage platforms isn't quite as simple as moving applications or virtual machines to a new server. ... That is changing though, and fast. More freely downloadable packages have appeared, albeit mainly aimed at trial users. And more companies offer services to help with hardware/software integration and tuning, and then to provide the sort of enterprise-grade support that we have come to expect from the one-stop-shop storage vendors. One example is Red Hat, which sells services for Ceph and GlusterFS, branding the latter as Red Hat [Gluster] Storage. ... However, as the DIY challenge diminishes and the availability of commercial-quality support grows, the deliberate use of open source software for storage is moving beyond the tech-savvy hinterlands at the far ends of the storage scale. ... Add the almost accidental use of open source storage software, packaged within appliances or other open source platforms, and newer open source storage projects such as Ceph and OpenStack Swift, both of which are object storage platforms and are squarely aimed at the enterprise, and all the indications are that open source storage is not just ready for the mainstream – it is already there.

It's not too often that a flourishing enterprise technology company grows 18 percent to 22 percent for the last six quarters and is treated like it's about to roll over. Welcome to Red Hat's conundrum. The company delivered a strong second quarter and landed 55 deals worth more than $1 million. Yet Red Hat is continually having to hurdle the proverbial wall of worry about the public cloud and how it will ultimately lose revenue as enterprises move away from running their own datacenters. ... Red Hat habitually describes its software as key to the hybrid cloud. As a term, hybrid cloud typically refers to a legacy vendor trying to sell you more datacenter gear and software. The catch is that Red Hat's hybrid cloud is different relative to the crowd. ... Public cloud deployments don't necessarily hurt Red Hat, which runs on most public clouds including Microsoft's Azure. ... Worrywarts about Red Hat will argue that a move to the public cloud means that AWS will get the Linux business. Not necessarily. "As more goes to the public cloud the more relevant we get," Whitehurst [CEO of
Red Hat] argued. "If you are moving to Amazon you have to architect it so you're not locked in. Large enterprises feel burned out about being locked in." In other words, Red Hat is that anti-lock-in abstraction layer.

Systemlink, a Dublin-based manufacturer of heating systems, provides smart heating systems that save energy and water. To help consumers make more informed decisions and save energy and money, the company wanted to develop a way for consumers to monitor and track their utility usage. Using Red Hat Mobile Application Platform, Systemlink developed an Internet of Things (IoT)-ready mobile application that lets customers track their utility use using their smartphones and reduce utility costs.

Red Hat is accepting nominations for the 2017 Red Hat Innovation Awards. The Red Hat Innovation Awards have recognized Red Hat's global customers and partners for the transformative projects and outstanding results they have experienced with Red Hat's open source solutions. Organizations can submit nominations in five categories, and winners will be selected based on the uniqueness, complexity, and magnitude of their Red Hat implementations. Submissions will be accepted until Nov. 9, 2016, and will be evaluated by a panel of business and open source technology experts. One winner will be chosen in each category. From those winners, the 2017 Red Hat Innovator of the Year will be selected by the community through online voting, and will be announced during an awards ceremony at the 2017 Red Hat Summit in Boston.