Red Hat Summit 2019, being held in Boston from May 7 - 9, offers attendees the chance to deep dive into every aspect of Red Hat and open source software. However, with all of the options for sessions to attend, it can be tricky to pick which ones to attend.

Digital transformation has been a hot topic for several years and we expect it to continue to be as we move into the future. According to the Red Hat Global Customer Tech Outlook Survey, companies are continuing to take digital transformation efforts seriously, with 35 percent of respondents looking to introduce new business models or new digital products and services to aid it within the next twelve months. There is hardly a question of IF digital transformation is needed, but more a matter of when it will happen and how it will be done. At Red Hat Summit, attendees will hear about the importance of digital transformation and insights into how Red Hat technology can be the backbone of transformation efforts.

While we can’t cover every breakout that will cover digital transformation, here are a few sessions worth attending:

Delivering digital transformation and business impact with IoT, machine learning, and a hybrid cloud
Sensata, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of sensors and control equipment, was in need of a digital makeover. Device data was available from various types of machines on their factory floor. However, the company found it too complex to manage the devices generating the data, integrating the flow of data into existing back-end systems, doing advanced analytics on that data, and then delivering services that could generate real-time decision making at the edge. In this session, learn how Sensata, together with Clairvoyant, a leading systems integrator and Red Hat partner, was able to accelerate digital transformation using Internet of Things (IoT) and machine learning in a hybrid cloud environment. Specifically discuss: their vision and roadmap for digital transformation; how they built an open data processing pipeline for IoT data using an end-to-end architecture; how they were able to power edge analytics and machine learning inferencing at the IoT edge that allows predictions to be made and decisions to be executed in real time; the flexible and hybrid cloud environment designed to provide the key foundational elements that organizations need to quickly and more securely roll out IoT use cases.

Digital transformation and the open organization: A people story
In this session about culture and leadership, you will learn about the core principles of an open organization and their impact on digital transformation. Specifically, it will cover the principles of agile planning and open communication in supporting transformation projects. The session will include observations from customer transformation efforts that expanded beyond their technology choice and into elements such as team structure, planning cadence, and feedback loops over the course of a multi-year transformation.

Digital transformation from the eyes of industry leaders: New results from Harvard Business Review
Digital transformation is having a major impact globally and across all industries. While recognizing the importance of digital transformation, most businesses are not ready to transform themselves in response. An August 2018 Harvard Business Review report sponsored by Red Hat revealed that only 13 percent of respondents rated their efforts around digital transformation as very effective. The respondents understand the implications and relate to the importance of addressing technology, process, and culture changes, but struggle to implement strategies to make the changes, with culture as the leading inhibitor. In this session, learn what industry leaders consider critical digital transformation capabilities, where organizations are struggling with adoption, what success looks like, and how many organizations are measuring the efficacy of their efforts.

Digital transformation: From legacy to innovator
Hear how Omnitracs, an industry leader in trucking logistics, is transforming from a software company to digital platform provider. Learn how a 30-year-old company crosses the technical and cultural divide from traditional software developer for incremental product improvement to delivering a digital platform that offers market innovation through a microservices architecture used both internally for rapid product delivery and offered to customers and partners as a framework for creating and extending industry offerings. In this session, learn about Omnitracs' digital transformation, including: moving to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform for cloud-native, containerized application development; domain-driven design and iterative architecture frameworks and processes to move from long-cycle analysis to rapid development and incremental design; secure DevOps practices to move from a code development to product development mentality; agile and scrum processes to power experimentation and improve time from concept to revenue; Red Hat Open Innovation Labs to accelerate people, process, and cultural change; Red Hat Ansible Automation to meet the principle of "automate anything that has to be done more than once;” application programming interface (API) management to power integration and platform on-boarding. Transformation has many rewards.

Florida Blue: Digital transformation to deliver at the speed of healthcare
Healthcare is a constantly evolving market that's driven by changes in customer behaviors and demands and by changes in governmental regulations. With the help of Red Hat technologies, Florida Blue—one of Florida's leading health insurers—has implemented improvements from onboarding of resources, to delivering solutions, to production. Join this session to hear how Florida Blue uses an elastic environment to meet the fluctuating demand across multiple domains and tenants.

For digital transformation, the answer is open source
Whether your organization wants to modernize, increase speed and efficiency, break new ground, or redefine your core business model, its success will hinge on the organization's cultural transformation and ability to innovate while dealing with change. "An open source culture powers innovation" is truer than ever as we're now seeing enterprises not only adopting open source, but relying on it, too. Join this interactive session to discuss: the relevancy, benefits, and ROI of open source, including looking at the business drivers and goals; the stage of your organization—consuming, collaborating or creating open source—and how you compare to other organizations; what organizations are doing internally to adopt open source technology, tools, process and ways of working; or what organizations are doing externally, working within an ecosystem of partners and communities—including competitors. This birds-of-a-feather session offers an opportunity to participate in the conversations by sharing your insights and experiences, hearing what's worked well for others, and networking with other professionals.

Ready to register for Red Hat Summit? Yeah, we thought so. We look forward to seeing you on-site, learning all about using Red Hat to digitally transform no matter what industry you are in or what your business and enterprise goals are. Use the code RHBLOG19 and you’ll receive $100 off your registration fees. (This code can only be used once per attendee, and cannot be combined with any other offer.)


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Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies.

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