 Okay, we're back in theCUBE. We said we were signing off for the night, but during the hallway track, we ran into our old friend, Stu Miniman, who was the director of Market Insights at Red Hat. Stu, friend of theCUBE, done the thousands of CUBE interviews. Dave, it's great to be here. Thanks for pulling me on. You and I hosted Red Hat Summit before. It's great to see Paul here. I was actually, I was talking to some of the Red Hatters walking around Boston. It's great to have an event here. Boston's got strong presence. And I understand, it was either the first or second year they had it over, what's the building they're tearing down, you know, right down the road here. It was the World Trade Center. I think that's where they actually held it the first time they were here. We hosted theCUBE at the Heinz Convention Center. We did the CUBE for Summit at the BCE next door. And of course, with the pandemic being what it was, we're a little smaller, a nice intimate event here. It's great to be able to roam the halls, see a whole bunch of people, and lots of watching online. It's great. It's around the same size as those, maybe those Vertica big data that we used to have here. And I like that you were commenting out at the theater and around this morning for the keynotes, that was good. And the keynotes being compressed, I think is the real value for the attendees, you know? Because people come to these events, they want to see each other, you know? They want to, it's like the band getting back together. And so when you're stuck in the keynote room, it's like, ugh, okay, time to go. I don't know that any of us used to sitting at home where I could just click to another tab or, you know, pause it or run for, do something for the family or a quick bio break. The three hour keynote, I hope, has been retired. But it's an interesting point, though, that the virtual event really is driving the physical. And this, the way Red Hat marketed this event was very much around the virtual attendee. The physical was almost an afterthought, so. Right, this is an invite only for in-person, so you're absolutely right. It's optimizing, you know, the things that are being streamed. The online audience is the big audience, and we just happen to be in here to clap and do some things around what they're doing. I wonder if we'll see that, well. It's becoming the norm. I think like virtual, Stu, you know this well. When virtual first came in, nobody had a clue with what they were doing. It was really hard. They tried different things. They tried to take the physical and just jam it into the virtual. That didn't work. They tried doing fun things. They would bring in, you know, a famous person or a comedian, that kind of worked, I guess. But everybody showed up for that and then left. And I think they're trying to figure it out what this hybrid thing is. I've seen it both ways. I've seen situations like this where they're really sensitive to the virtual. I've seen others where it's the FOMO of the physical. People want physical. So, yeah, I think it depends. I mean, re-invent last year was heavy physical. Yeah, with 15,000 people there. Pretty long keynotes, you know. So maybe Amazon can get away with it, but I think most companies aren't going to be able to. So, what is the market telling you? What are these insights? Yeah, so Dave, just talking about Amazon, obviously, you know, the world I live in, cloud and that discussion of cloud, the journey that customers are going on is where we're spending a lot of the discussion. So, you know, it was great to hear in the keynote, talked about, you know, our deep partnerships with the cloud providers and what we're doing to help people with, you'd like to call it super cloud, some call it hybrid or multi cloud. New name. Distributed cloud, oh. Meta cloud. Come on. All right, so, you know, Ashash is my executive, so it's wonderful, but we'll see. You know, if I can put on my VR goggles and that will help me move things. But I love, like, the partnership announcement with General Motors today, because not every company has the needs of, you know, software-driven electric vehicles all over the place, but the technology that we build for them actually has ramifications everywhere. We've been working to take Kubernetes and make it smaller over time. So, things that we do at the edge benefit the cloud, benefit what we do in the data center. It's that advancement of science and technology just lifts all boats. So, what's your take on all this? The EV and, you know, software on wheels, I mean Tesla obviously has a huge lead. It's kind of like the Amazon of vehicles, right? It's sort of inspired a whole new wave of innovation. Now you've got every automobile manufacturer trying to go, and after that is the future of vehicles. Is something you followed or something you have an opinion on? Oh, absolutely. It's driving innovation in some ways the way that DOS drove innovation on the desktop. If you remember the 64K DOS limit for years, that was, the software developers came up with some amazing ways to work within that 64K limit. Then when it was gone, we got bloatware. But it actually does enforce a level of discipline on you to try to figure out how to make software run better, run more efficiently. And that has upstream impacts on the enterprise product. Well, right, so following your analogy, you talk about the enablement to the desktop. Linux was a huge influence on allowing the individual person to write code and write software and what's happening in the EV. It's software platform. All of these innovations that we're seeing across industries is how is software transforming things? We go back to the Mark Andriesen, software is eating the world. Open source is the way that software is developed. Who's at the intersection of all those? We think we have a nice part to play in that. I loved, Dave, I don't know if you caught at the end of the keynote, Matt Hicks basically said, this isn't our mission isn't just to write enterprise software. Our mission is based off of open source because open source unlocks innovation for the world. And that's one of the things that drew me to Red Hat is it's not just tech in good places but allowing underrepresented different countries to participate in what's happening with software and we can all move that ball forward. Can we declare victory for open source because it's not just open source products but everything that's developed today whether proprietary or open has open source in it. Open source is the development model period today. Are there some places that there's proprietary? Absolutely, but I had a discussion with Deepak Singh who's been on theCUBE many times. He said, our default is we start with open source code. I mean, that's even Amazon when you start talking about that. I said they built the $70 billion business on open source. Exactly. They didn't necessarily give it back but that's hey, all's fair in tech and more. It is interesting how the managed service model has sort of rescued open source companies that were trying to do the Red Hat model. No one's ever really successfully duplicated the Red Hat model. A lot of companies were floundering and failing and then the managed service option came along and now they're all cloud service providers. So the only thing I'd say is that there are some other peers we have in the industry that are built off open source that are doing okay. The recent example, GitLab and HashiCorp both went public, Hashi is doing some managed services but it's not the majority of their product. Look at a company like Mongo. They've heavily pivoted toward the managed service. It is where we see the largest growth in our area. The products that we have again with Amazon, with Microsoft, huge growth, lots of interest. It's one of the things I spend most of my time talking on. I think Databricks is another interesting example. Because Cloudera was the now company and they had the sort of open core and then they had the proprietary piece and it obviously didn't work. Databricks when they developed Spark out of Berkeley, everybody thought they were going to do kind of a similar model and instead they went for all in on managed services. And it's really worked well. I think they were ahead of that curve and you're seeing it now is what customers want. Well, Dave, you cover the database market pretty heavily. How many different open source database options are there today and that's one of the things we're solving when if you look at what is Red Hat doing in the cloud? Okay, I've got lots of databases. Well, we have something called Red Hat Open Database Access which is from a developer. I don't want to have to think about, I've got six different databases. Which one, where's the repository, how does all that happen? We give that consistency, it's tied into OpenShift so it can help abstract some of those pieces. Got same Kafka streaming, we've got APIs so it's frameworks and enablers to help bridge that gap between the complexity that's out there in the cloud and for the developer tool chain. That's really important role you guys play though because you have this proliferation, you mentioned Mongo, so many others, Presto and Starburst and such, so many other open source options out there now. And companies, developers want to work with multiple databases within the same application and you have a role in making that easy. Yeah, so, and that is if you talk about the question I get all the time is, what's next for Kubernetes? Dave, you and I did a preview for KubeCon and it's automation and simplicity that we need to be. It's not enough to just say, hey, we've got APIs. It's like Dave, we used to say, we've got standards, great. Everybody's implementation was a little bit different. So we have API sprawl today so it's building that ecosystem. You've been talking to a number of our partners. We are very active in the community and trying to do things that can lift up the community, help the developers, help that cloud native ecosystem, help our customers move faster. Yeah, API is better than scripts, but they got to be managed, right? So that's really what you guys are doing that's different. You're not trying to own everything, right? It's sort of antithetical to how billions and trillions are made in the IT industry. Yeah, you know, I remember a few years ago we talked here and you look at the size that Red Hat is and the question is, could Red Hat have monetized more if the model was a little different? It's like, well, maybe, but that's not the why. I love that they actually had Simon Sainic come in and work with Red Hat and that open locks the world. That's the core, it's the why. When I joined, they're like, here's a book of Red Hat. You can get it online and that why of what we do so we never have to think of how do we get there? We did an acquisition in the security space a year ago. Stackrocks took us a year. It's open source, stackrocks.io, community driven open source project there because we could have said, oh, well it's kind of open source and there's pieces that are open source but we want it to be fully open source. You just talked to Gunner about how he's, rel9 based off of CentOS Stream and now developing out in the open with that model. We're always a big fan of Whitehurst's culture book, right? That makes a difference. Yeah, the open organization and Red Hat, the culture is special. It's definitely interesting. So first of all, most companies are built with the hierarchy in mind. Had a friend of mine that when he joined Red Hat, he's like, I don't understand, it's almost like you have lots of individual contractors all doing their things because Red Hat works on thousands of projects but I remember talking to Rackspace years ago when OpenStack was a thing and they're like, how do you figure out what to work on? Oh, well we hire great people and they work on what's important to them and I'm like, that doesn't sound like a business. And he's like, well, we struggle sometimes to that balance. Red Hat has found that balance because we work on a lot of different projects and there are people inside Red Hat that are, they care more about the project than they do the business but there's the overall view as to where we participate and where we productize because we're not creating IP because it's all an open source. So it's the monetizations, the relationships we have our customers, the ecosystems that we build. And so that is special and I'll tell you that my line has been Red Hat on the inside is even more Red Hat. The debates and the discussions are brutal. I mean, technical people tearing things apart, questioning things and you can't be thin skinned and the other thing is what's great is new people. We have, I've talked to so many people that started at Red Hat at interns and will stay for seven, eight years and they come there and they have as much of a seat at the table and when I talk to new people, your job is if you don't understand something or you think we might be able to do it differently, you better speak up because we want your opinion and we'll take that, everybody takes that into consideration. It's not like, you know, does the decision go all the way up to this executive? And it's like, no, it's done more at the team. The cultural contrast between that and your parent, IBM couldn't be more dramatic. And we talked earlier with Paul Cormier about has IBM really walked the walk when it comes to leaving Red Hat on the loan? Naturally, he said yes, but what's your perspective? Yeah, are there some big blue people across the street or something I heard at this event? But look, do we interact with IBM? Of course, one of the reasons that IBM and IBM services, both products and services should be able to help get us breadth in the marketplace. There are times that we go arm in arm into customer meetings. And there are times that customers tell us, I like Red Hat, I don't like IBM. And there's other ones that have been like, well, I'm a long time IBM, I'm not sure about Red Hat. We have to be able to meet all of those customers where they are, but from my standpoint, I've got a Red Hat badge, I've got a Red Hat email, I've got Red Hat benefits. So we are fiercely independent. And Paul, we've done blogs and there's lots of articles been written is Red Hat will stay Red Hat. I didn't happen to catch, our event I know is on CNBC today and talking at their event, but I'm sure Red Hat got mentioned. Well, he talks about Red Hat all the time. They already call, he's talking. It's interesting that he's not here greeting this audience, right? It's again, almost by design, right? But maybe that's meant to be an emblematic. And one of the questions being in the cloud group is I'm not outpitching IBM cloud. If a customer comes to me and asks about, we have a deep partnership and IBM will be happy to tell you about our integrations as opposed to, I'm happy to go into a deep discussion of what we're doing with Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. So that's how we do it. It's very different Dave from, you and I watch really closely, the VMware EMC, VMware Dell and how that relationship, this one is different. We are owned by IBM, but we mostly, it does IBM fund initiatives and have certain strategic things that are done. Absolutely. But we maintain Red Hat. But there are similarities. I mean, the VMware crowd didn't want to talk about EMC, but they had to. They were kind of forced to, whereas it's, you're not being forced to. Right. And then once Dell came in there, it was joint product development. I always thought a spin in would have been, you know, the more effective, of course, Michael Dell and Aegon wouldn't have gotten their $40 billion out. But I think a spin in was more natural based on where they were going. And it would have been, I think a more dominant position in the marketplace. They would have had more software, but again, financially, it wouldn't have made as much sense. But that whole dynamic is different. I mean, people said they were going to look at VMware as a model and it's been largely different. Because remember, VMware, of course, was a separate company and now is a fully separate company. Red Hat was integrating. We thought, okay, are they going to get blue washed? We're watching and watching and watching. You had said, well, if the Red Hat culture isn't permeating IBM, then it's a failure. And I don't know if that's happening, but it's definitely been preserved. I mean, Dave, I know I read one article at the beginning of the year is, can Arvin make IBM Microsoft Junior? Follow the same turnaround that Satya Nadella drove over there. IBM, I think, making some progress. I mean, I read and watch what you and the team are all writing about it. And I'll withhold judgment on IBM. Obviously, there's certain financial things that we'd love to see IBM succeed. We worry about our business. We do our thing and IBM shares our results and they've been solid. Microsoft had such massive cash flow that even Ballmer couldn't screw it up. I mean, this is true, right? I mean, you think about how irrelevant Microsoft was in the conversation during his tenure and yet they never got really, they maintained a position so that when Nadella came in, they were able to re-ascend and now are becoming that dominant player. IBM just doesn't have that cash flow and that luxury. But, I mean, if he pulls it off, he'll be the CEO of the decade. Just, you mentioned partners earlier. Big concern when the acquisitions first announced was that the Dell's and the HP's and the such wouldn't want to work with Red Hat anymore. You've sort of been here through that transition. Is that an issue? Not that I've seen, no. I mean, the hardware suppliers, the ISVs, the GSIs are all very important. It was great to see, I think you had Accenture on theCUBE today, obviously a very important partner as we go to the cloud. IBM's another important partner, not only for IBM Cloud, but IBM Services, deep partnership with Azure and AWS. So, those partners and from a technology standpoint, the cloud-native ecosystem, we talked about it's not just a Red Hat product. I constantly have to talk about, look, we have a lot of pieces, but your developers are going to have other tools that they're going to use and the security space, there is no such thing as a silver bullet. So, I've been having some great conversations here already this week with some of our partners that are helping us to round out that whole solution, help our customers because it has to be, it's an ecosystem and we're one of the drivers to help that move forward. Well, I mean, we were at Dell TechWorld last week and there's a lot of talk about DevSecOps and DevOps and Dell being more developer friendly, obviously they go a long way to go, but you can't have that, take that posture and not have a relationship with Red Hat if all you got is Pivotal and VMware and Tanzu. I was thrilled to hear the OpenShift mention in the keynote when they talked about what they were doing with Multicut. Of course, how could you not? How could you have any credibility if you're just like, oh, Pivotal, Pivotal, Pivotal, Tanzu, Tanzu, Tanzu's doing its thing and it's a smart strategy. VMware is also a partner of ours, but we would hope that with VMware being independent, that does open the door for us to do even more with Dell. Yeah, because you guys have had a weird relationship with them under ownership of EMC and then Dell, right? And then the whole IBM thing, but that's just a different world now. Ecosystems are forming and reforming and Dell's building out its own cloud and it's got to have, look at Amazon, I wrote about this. I said, can you envision the day where Dell actually offers competitive products in its suite, in its service offering? I mean, it's hard to see. They're not there yet, they're not even close and they have this high say-do ratio or really it's a low say-do, they say high say-do, but look at what they did with Nutanix. You look at what Dell did with the Cisco relationship. So it's got to get better at that and it will. I really do believe that that's new thinking and same thing with HPE and I don't know about Lenovo that not as much of an ecosystem play, but certainly Dell and HPE. Yeah, absolutely. Michael Dell would always love to poke at HPE and HPE really went very far down the path of their own products. They went away from their services organization that used to be more like IBM that would offer lots of different offerings and very much it was a HPE Invent. Well, if we didn't invent it, you're not getting it from us. So Dell, we'll see, as you said. The ecosystems are definitely forming, converging and going in lots of different directions. Your position is, hey, we're here, we're here to help. Yeah, we're here, we have customers. One of the best proof points I have is the solution that we have with Amazon. Amazon doesn't do the engineering work to make us a native offering if they didn't have the customer demand because Amazon's driven off of data. So they came to us, they worked with us. It's a lot of work to be able to make that happen, but you want to make it frictionless for customers so that they can adopt that. That's a long path. All right, so evening event, there's a customer event this evening, upstairs in the lobby. Microsoft is having a little shindig and then there's a lot of customer dinners going on. So, Stu, we'll see you out there tonight. All right, thank you. We'll be watching a Bruin somewhere. Keynotes tomorrow, a lot of good sessions and enablements and yeah, it's great to be in person to be able to bump some people, meet some people and hey, I'm still a year and a half in, still meeting a lot of my peers in person for the first time. Yeah, and that's kind of weird, isn't it? And then we kick off tomorrow at 10 a.m., actually Stephanie Cheris is coming on. There she is in the background. She's always a great guest and maybe do a little kickoff and have some fun tomorrow. So this is Dave Vellante for Stu Miniman. Paul Gillan is my co-host. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Red Hat Summit 2022. We'll see you tomorrow.