Friday Five — May 18, 2018

Red Hat (3scale) has been named a Leader by Gartner in its April 2018 Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management. Red Hat (3scale) was also placed in the Leaders quadrant of the previous version of the Magic Quadrant for Full Life Cycle API Management. Gartner's Magic Quadrants are based on analysis of a vendor's completeness of vision and ability to execute.

This week, Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat Virtualization 4.2, the newest release of its Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)-powered virtualization platform. Red Hat Virtualization 4.2 offers significant product updates from a simplified user interface to new capabilities around virtual networking. Introduced in tandem with the new version is Red Hat Virtualization Suite, comprised of Red Hat Virtualization and Red Hat CloudForms, Red Hat's hybrid infrastructure management platform, offering a pre-integrated, simplified access point to open virtualization technologies combined with management.

Red Hat's aim for its OpenShift container management platform is nothing short of total domination of one of the tech industry's most rapidly growing markets, the company's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, told CRN. And Red Hat's not-so-secret weapon in that ultra-competitive arena is its market-leading operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which distinguishes containers within OpenShift from those managed by competing platforms, Whitehurst told CRN at last week's Red Hat Summit in San Francisco. "Containers are Linux. It is just a different way to deliver Linux," Whitehurst said. "So for us it's existential to win."

Serverless computing is an emerging category that represents a shift in the way developers build and deliver software systems. By abstracting application infrastructure away from the code, it can greatly simplify the development process while introducing new cost and efficiency benefits. Red Hat is fortunate to be in a position of strength in the cloud application platform space with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, and we are building off of that strength with the introduction of OpenShift Cloud Functions, an open, capable, enterprise-grade serverless tool based on Apache OpenWhisk, that can enable customers to focus on delivering business value without having to sacrifice their freedom to do so.

Last week, Red Hat announced its collaboration with UNICEF Innovation - the group tasked with identifying, prototyping and scaling technologies and practices that strengthen UNICEF's work for children. During the eight-week residency with Red Hat Open Innovation Labs, teams worked together to improve the usability of the School Mapping Project tool to support humanitarian research in real-time. The collaboration focused on advancing the School Mapping Project, including enhancements to Magicbox, a software platform that uses real-time data from both public sources and private sector partners to inform life-saving humanitarian responses to emergency situations.