Friday Five — January 13, 2017

Registration is now open for the 2017 Red Hat Summit! Learn, network, and experience open source at every level with hundreds of sessions led by the best and brightest in open source, hands-on experience with our newest technologies, face-to-face interaction with product experts–or the actual builders–demonstrating the latest technologies, the chance to grow your network, reconnect with peers, and make new partnerships. The event will be in Boston at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, May 2-4, 2017. Early bird registration ends March 2.

Now more than ever, we know that modern application development and deployment are tied to business growth. A business is 8 times more likely to gain share if it is at the forefront of digital maturity. Speed, security, and operational efficiency are key elements that will determine success or failure. Linux^® containers, used correctly, will help your organization deliver all three. Sign up and attend Containers for the Enterprise | A Red Hat virtual event to find out how to unlock the potential of Linux containers in their enterprise. The live event will take place Thursday, January 19, 2017 at 11 a.m. ET | 4 p.m. UTC.

In 2016, open source products were front-and-center. A number of new offerings in containers, networking, storage and other major areas were among those that debuted during the year. At #4 is Red Hat Ceph Storage 2. Red Hat this year unveiled a major update to Ceph Storage, the company's open software-defined storage platform — the first new version of the platform since Red Hat acquired the technology in 2014. Ceph Storage 2 introduces a new storage management system and new features geared toward object storage workloads, such as new global object storage clusters that offer better data synchronization between distributed clusters and other benefits.

It's time to upgrade or to renew your VMware vSphere licenses. This decision is not easy for a few reasons such as: One or more of your VMware products are end of life, or there are hundreds or thousands of virtual machines (VMs) in your environment and the costs to maintain them has significantly gone up. I have good news for you. There is a reliable and enterprise choice and switching has never been easier with the recent release of Red Hat Virtualization 4. You can run Red Hat Virtualization alongside VMware and migrate workloads in phases, perhaps starting with dev/test. Compared to competing products, Red Hat Virtualization delivers easier integration and interoperability with existing infrastructure, higher density and performance, and improved economics. Read more on the 5 reasons you should switch to Red Hat Virtualization.

Today, the Linux operating system is used almost everywhere, from web servers, android devices, supercomputers and to IoT devices. Linux has become more than just an operating system, and because of this, it has created huge opportunities for enterprises to benefit from. This market allowed great tech companies to be established to fulfill its needs, which gave us the 3 major Linux companies: Red Hat, SUSE and Canonical. The business model for each of the major companies was similar: selling support services and subscriptions for their own open source and Linux-based products. Since its establishment in 1993, Red Hat grown to become the biggest Linux and open source company and a key player in the open source world. Red Hat offers a lot of solutions and services, however, Red Hat also provides a lot more than products and technologies. Red Hat certifications are one of the most valuable certifications in the Linux market. If you are planning to get a career in this field, you definitely should look into the RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator) or RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer) courses. According to Red Hat, more than 90% of the top 500 fortune global companies rely on them for their infrastructure. The company is expecting a total revenue of around $2.4 billion for the fiscal year 2017 (which will end in February, 2017). Thus, making it–fairly–the largest open source company in the world.