Friday Five — January 8, 2016

In 2015, Microsoft embraced Linux, Apple open-sourced its newest, hottest programming language, and the cloud couldn't run without Linux and open-source software... Today's Microsoft isn't Gates or Ballmer's Microsoft. Today's Microsoft has brought .NET Core to Linux... As for the cloud, which is where all IT work is headed, much of it already runs Linux and uses open-source server programs. As Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, said last fall, "one in four instances [on Azure] are Linux." And Amazon Web Services (AWS), the biggest cloud of all?... It runs on a customized version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) code. Looking ahead, this trend will only continue. OpenStack, a pure open-source cloud play with vast support, continues to grow in popularity.

The 2016 Red Hat Summit call for papers is open until Monday, January 11, 2016 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Visit the Summit website to get started, plus check out the submission guide for session type descriptions, abstract writing help, and more. We are looking for the best solutions-focused sessions. Attendees range from C-level executives and IT managers to engineers and developers, so we're looking for both high-level business and IT strategy sessions and technical deep dives. Red Hat Summit will be June 28-July 1, 2016 in San Francisco.

"As we think about 2016 and beyond, it's critical to recognize that we are building tomorrow's IT legacy today. The next generation of technologists will inherit the decisions we make now just like we are dealing now with the legacy decisions made by the generation before us... Ask yourself how much flexibility, portability, and choice your technology decisions will give you in the future. Open source and open APIs give you the broadest range of options moving forward as you migrate more of your enterprise's applications to the cloud. Red Hat believes that open source not only offers faster innovation, but the freedom and flexibility to help organizations escape legacy decisions tied to single vendors." —Jim Whitehurst, president and CEO, Red Hat

Red Hat has been named one of the Top 50 Best Places to Work in 2016 by Glassdoor. Glassdoor's annual Employees' Choice Awards honor the Best Places to Work across North America and parts of Europe. Winners are determined by the people who know these companies best–their employees. Check out Red Hat's ranking as well as other companies who made the list.

The three big guns in IBD's [Investor's Business Daily's] Computer Software-Desktop group – Microsoft, Adobe and Red Hat – have reloaded, taking aim at the cloud for growth... Red Hat's computer server operating system has displaced Unix in most corporate data centers. Its challenge is staying in the mix as companies move to next-generation data-center technologies, geared for hybrid, private-public cloud infrastructure... Red Hat may have an edge, according to analysts, as companies steer away from proprietary technologies that could lock them into vendors. Red Hat has been investing in emerging technologies, such as cloud software standard OpenStack, and making acquisitions.