Digital Transformation and IoT at the Red Hat Summit

It’s summer in San Francisco, which means that it’s time again for Red Hat Summit. One of the big themes we’re highlighting at the conference this year is how Red Hat is collaborating with customers and the community to drive digital transformation via open source and open hybrid clouds.

We have many sessions for developers at DevNation on how to create next-generation applications and services, because this is how we will deliver new digital services to our customers.

We have a tremendous set of content around hybrid cloud architectures, from containers and OpenStack deep-dives to architecture and strategy discussions because cloud is where we will run our digital services.

And, perhaps at the heart of it all, we have many opportunities for Summit attendees to engage around IoT, because IoT is how we believe analog businesses will connect to the digital world.

The IoT Opportunity

Because all businesses and human organizations inherently have physical and analog elements at their core, IoT presents a massive opportunity.

The number of devices connecting to the Internet is rapidly outpacing the total size of the entire human population. Indeed, by 2020, Gartner predicts that there will be more than 23 billion connected devices, compared with a human population of 9 billion people.

Consequently, McKinsey estimates that the market impact of IoT by 2025 will be $11.1 trillion. That’s more than the entire 2015 GDP of China!

At Red Hat Summit, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the business and strategic impact of IoT through a number of sessions with Red Hat and partners, such as SAP, Telefonica, and Accenture. Here are a sampling of topics:

A Three-Tier Architecture for IoT

One of Red Hat’s focuses around IoT has been delivering a consistent set of software across a three-tier IoT architecture spanning devices, intelligent gateways, and datacenters/clouds.

This architecture is important because it enables enterprise IoT use cases by driving datacenter functionality to edge devices.

Across this architecture, Red Hat:

  • Is a leader in powering a variety of workloads--including IoT--in the data center across our open hybrid cloud platforms

  • Provides a comprehensive set of software for enabling gateways, computers that sit in close physical proximity to IoT devices and provide local device management, real-time data analysis and response, and brokering between devices and datacenters

  • Powers many devices with our Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, provides connectivity with Red Hat JBoss messaging clients, and delivers a mobile application platform

At Red Hat Summit, we have many opportunities to dive into the technologies behind this architecture, with sessions such as:

Towards the IoT Future

We are building towards the IoT future, where we can connect all our analog businesses to the digital world, on two core principles:

  • Open source is driving the technology for IoT

  • Enterprises require strong capabilities and consistency across an overall IoT architecture

This is why Red Hat deploys the exact same enterprise-grade software, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat JBoss Middleware, across all three tiers of an IoT architecture. As important as security hardening, industry and government certifications, and timely update mechanisms are in the datacenter, they are perhaps even more important for remote devices in the field.

Beyond our own efforts, we are also pleased to highlight our work with SAP around IoT during Nayaki Nayyars SAP general session during the Red Hat Summit.

And, finally, for those who are interested in helping build the IoT future, we are featuring an IoT Hack Night at DevNation, hands-on labs, and many connection opportunities at our Red Hat pavilion booth and in the partner presentation theater.

We hope to see you at the Red Hat Summit and to engage with you around this total transformation that is sweeping across our businesses and industries.