 Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Red Hat Summit 2021 virtual. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here with Hilary Hunter, the VP and CTO and IBM Fellow of IBM Cloud at IBM. Hilary, great to see you. Welcome back. You're no stranger to us in theCUBE. You've done this a few times. Thanks for coming on. Thanks so much for having me back. Great to talk more today. I believe IBM is the premier sponsor for Red Hat Summit this year, no? I mean, I think they're somewhat interested in what's happening. Yeah, you know, Summit is such a great event for us because it brings together clients that, you know, we work together with Red Hat on and gives us a chance to really talk about that overall journey to cloud and everything that we offer around cloud and cloud adoption and around Red Hat's capabilities as well. So we look forward to the Summit every year, for sure. You know, the new IBM Red Hat relationship is obviously pretty tight and successful seeing the early formations and customer traction and just kind of the momentum. I'll never forget at Red Hat Summit, I think it was in San Francisco. I sat down with Arvin at that time. Red Hat was not part of IBM and it was interesting. He was so tied into cloud native. It was almost as if he was dry running the acquisition which he announced just moments later after that. But you can see the balance. The CEO at IBM really totally sees the cloud. He sees that experience. He sees the customer impact. This has been an interesting year, especially with COVID and with the combination of Red Hat and IBM. This cloud priority for IT leaders is more important than ever before. What's your take on this? Because clearly you guys are all in on cloud but not what people think. What's your view on this? Yeah, you know, from the perspective of those that are kind of data oriented, IBM Institute for Business Value did lots of studies over the last year saying that over 60% of leaders feel increased urgency to get to the cloud. They're intending to accelerate their program to the cloud. But I think just even as consumers, we're each very conscious that our digital behaviors have changed a lot in the last year. And we see that in our enterprise client base where everything from a bank we worked in that had to stand up their country's equivalent of the payroll protection program in a matter of weeks which is just kind of unheard of to do something that robust, that quickly. Or retail, obviously dealing with major changes, manufacturing, dealing with major changes and all consumers wanting to consume things on an app basis and such, not going into brick and mortar stores and such. And so everything has changed and months I would say have sort of time frames of months have been the norm instead of years for taking applications forward and modernizing them. And so this journey to cloud has compressed, it's accelerated and as one client I spoke with said in the midst of last year, it is existential that I get to cloud with urgency. And I think that has been the theme of 2020 and now also of 2021. And so it is the core technology for moving faster and dealing with all the change that we're all experiencing. Yeah, that says so right on point. But I want to ask you because this is the key trend. Enterprises are now realizing that cloud native architectures based on open source specifically is a key architectural first principle now. Yeah. What's your, what would you say to the folks out there who are listening to this and watching this video who are out in the enterprise going, hey, that's a good call. I'm glad I did it. So I don't have any cognitive dissonance or I better get there faster. Yeah, you know, open source is such an important part of this conversation. Because I always say that open source moves at the rate and pace of global innovation which is kind of a cute phrase but I really don't mean it in any ways cute. It really is the case that the purpose of open source is for people globally to be contributing. And there's been innovation on everything from climate change to musical applications to things that are the fundamentals of major enterprise mission critical workloads that have happened is everyone is adopting cloud and open source faster. And so I think that this choice to be on open source is a choice really to move at the pace of global innovation. It's a choice to leverage capabilities that are portable and it's a choice to have flexibility and deployment because where everyone's IT is deployed has also changed and the balance of sort of where people need the cloud to kind of come to life and be has also changed as everyone's going through this period of significant change. That's awesome. IBM like Red Hat has been a long supporter and has a history of supporting open source projects from Linux to Kubernetes. I mean, you guys I think put a billion dollars in Linux way back when it first started really powered that movement. And that's going back into the history books there. So how are you guys all collaborating today to advance the open source solutions for clients? Yeah, you know, we remain very heavily invested in open source communities and invested in work jointly with Red Hat. You know, we enabled the technology known as RACM, the short name for the Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management software, you know, in this last year. And so, you know, provided that capability to become the basis of that product. So we continue to, you know, move major projects into open source and we continue to encourage external innovators as well to create new capabilities in open source. Our call for code initiatives for developers as an example, have had specific programs around social justice and racial issues. We have a new call for code out encouraging open source projects around climate change and sustainable agriculture and all those kind of topics. And so everything from, you know, topics with developers to core product portfolio for us. We have a very firm commitment in an ongoing sustained contribution on an open source basis. I think that's important just to call out just to kind of take a little sidebar here. You guys really have a strong mission driven culture at IBM. I want to give you props for that. Just take a minute to say congratulations, call for code, incredible initiative. You guys do a great job. So congratulations on that. I appreciate it. Thank you, thank you. As a sponsor of Red Hat Summit this year, IBM sponsoring guys own Red Hat, you have two sessions that you're hosting. Could you talk about what's going on? Yeah, the two sessions. So one that I'm hosting is around getting what we call two and a half X value out of your cloud journey. And really looking at kind of how we're working with clients from the start of the journey of considering cloud through to actually deploying and managing environments and the operating model on the cloud and where we can extract greater value. And then another session that I'm doing with Roger Primo, our senior vice president for strategy at IBM. We're talking about lessons in cloud adoption from the Fortune 500. So we're talking there about Coca-Cola, European modeling partners, about Lumen technologies and also about Wonderman Thompson and what they're doing with us with clouds. So kind of two sessions, kind of one talking on sort of a chalkboard style, a little bit of an informal conversation about what does value mean in cloud or what are we trying to get out of it together? And then a session with Roger really kind of focused on enterprise use cases and real stories of cloud adoption. All right, so bottom line, what's going to be in the sessions? Why should I attend? What's the, give me the- Yeah, so, you know, honestly, I think that there's kind of this, there's this great hunger, I would say, in the industry right now to ascertain value. And in all IT decision-making, that's the key question, right? Not just go to the cloud because everyone's going to the cloud or not just adopt, you know, open source technologies because it's, you know, something that someone said to do. But what value were we going to get out of it? And then how do we have an intentional conversation about cloud architecture? How do we think about managing across environments in a consistent way? How do we think about extracting value in that journey of application modernization? And how do we structure and plan that in a way that results in value to the business at the end of the day because this notion of digital transformation is really what's underlying it. You want a different business outcome at the end of the day and the IT decisions that you take in your cloud journey, picking an open hybrid multi-cloud architecture, leveraging technologies like IBM Cloud satellite to have a consistent control plan across your environments, leveraging particular programs that we have around security and compliance to accelerate the journey for regulated industries, et cetera, taking intentional decisions that are relevant to your industry that enable future flexibility and then enable a broad ecosystem of content. For example, through Red Hat Marketplace, all the capabilities and content that deploy on to OpenShift, et cetera. Those are core foundational decisions that then unlock that value in the cloud journey and really result in a successful cloud experience. And not just, I kind of tried it and I did or didn't get out of it what I was expecting. So that's really what, you know, we talk about in these two sessions and walk through in the second session, then, you know, some client use cases of different levels and stages in that cloud journey, some really core enterprise capabilities and then Greenfield, white space, completely new capabilities and cloud can address that whole spectrum. You know, that's exciting. I want not to get all nerdy for a second here, but you know, you bring up cloud architecture, hybrid cloud architecture and correct me if I'm wrong if you're going to address it or not, because I think this is what I'm reporting and hearing in the industry is the killer problem everyone's trying to solve is, you mentioned data, you mentioned control plane for data, you mentioned security. These are like horizontally scalable operating model concepts. So if you think about an operating system, this is the architecture that becomes the cloud model, hybrid model, because it's not just public cloud, cloud native or being, you know, more in the cloud like a startup, the integration of operating at scale is a distributed computing model. So you have an operating system concept with some systems engineering. Yeah, it sounds like a computer to me, right? It sounds like a mainframe. Sounds like something like that where you're thinking about not just software, but operating model. Am I getting that right? Because this is like fundamental. Yeah, it's so fundamental. And I think it's a great analogy, right? I think it's, you know, everyone has kind of their different description of what cloud is and what constitutes cloud and all that kind of thing. But I think it's great to think of it as a system. It's a system for computing. And what we're trying to do with cloud, what we're trying to do with Kubernetes is to orchestrate a bunch of, you know, computing in a consistent way as, you know, other functions within a single server do. What we're trying to do with OpenShift is, you know, to enable clients to consume things in a consistent way across many different environments. Again, that's the same sort of function conceptually as, you know, an operating system or something like that is supposed to provide is to have a platform. Fundamentally, I think the word platform is important, right? Have a platform that's consistent across many environments and enables people to be productive in all those environments where they need to be doing their computing. You know, we were talking before we came on camera about cloud history and we were kind of riffing back and forth around, oh yeah, five years ago or six years ago was, you know, all the conversations was, go to the cloud now. It's like serious conversations around the maturity of cloud and how to operate at scale in the cloud, which is complex, it's a complex system and you have complexity around system complexity and novelty complexity. So you have kind of all these new things happening. So I want to ask you, because you're an IBM fellow and you're on the cloud side at IBM, with all this red hat goodness you got going on, can you give us a preview of the maturity model that you see, that IBM sees and that Red Hat's doing so that these architectures can be consistent across the platforms? Because you got DevSecOps, you got all these new things, you got security and data at scale. It's not that obvious or it's not easy, but it has to be easier. What's the preview of the maturity model? Yeah, you know, it really is about kind of a one plus one equals three conversation because Red Hat's approach to provide a consistent platform across different environments in terms of Linux and Kubernetes and the OpenShift platform enables that first conversation about consistency and maturity in many cases comes from consistency, being able to have standards and consistency and deployment across different environments leads to efficiency. But then IBM adds on that, you know, a set of conversations also around data governance, consistency of data cataloging, data management across environments, machine learning and AI, right? Bringing in AI for IT operations, helping you be more efficient to diagnose problems in the IT environment, other things like that. And then, you know, in addition, automation ultimately, right? When we're talking about AI for IT ops, but also automation, which begins down at the OpenShift level, you know, with use of Ansible and other things like that and extends then up into automation and monitoring of the environment and the workloads and other things like that. And so it really is, you know, a set of unlocking value through increasing amounts of insight, consistency across environments, layering that up into the data layer and then overall being able to do that, you know, efficiently and in a consistent way across the different environments, you know, where cloud needs to be deployed in order to be most effective. You know, Dave Vellante and I always talk about IBM and all the years we've been covering with theCUBE, I mean, we've pretty much been to every IBM event since theCUBE was founded and we're on our 11th year now. Watching the progression, you guys have so much expertise in so many different verticals, just the history and the expertise and the knowledge and the people there, so smart. I have to ask you, how have you evolved your portfolio with the cloud now as it's gone through as we are in the 2021 having these mature conversations around, you know, full integration, large scale enterprise deployments, critical mission, mission critical applications, critical infrastructure, data, cybersecurity, global scale, how have you evolved your portfolio to better support your clients in this new environment? Yeah, there's a lot in there and you hit a lot of the keywords already, thank you, but I think that, you know, we have oriented our portfolio such that all of our systems support Red Hat and OpenShift are cloud. We have Red Hat OpenShift as a managed service and Kubernetes is at the core of what we're doing as a cloud provider and achieving our own operational efficiencies. From the perspective of our software portfolio, our core products are delivered in the form of what we refer to as cloud packs on OpenShift and therefore deploy across all these different environments where OpenShift is supported, products available through Red Hat Marketplace, you know, which facilitates the billing and purchasing and acquisition and installation of anything within the Red Hat ecosystem. And I think, you know, for us, this has also then become also a journey about operational efficiency. We're working with many of our clients as we were kind of chatting about before about their cloud operating model, about their transformation and ultimately in many cases about consumption of cloud as a service. And so as we, you know, extend our own cloud capabilities, you know, out into other environments through distributed cloud program, what we refer to as IBM cloud satellite, you know, that enables consistent and secure deployment of cloud into any environment where someone needs, you know, cloud to be operated. And that operating model conversation with our clients, you know, has to do with their own OpenShift environments, it has to do with their software from IBM, it has to do with their cloud services. And we're really ultimately looking to partner with clients to find efficiency in each stage of that journey. And application modernization in deployment and then in getting consistency across all their environments, leveraging everything from the Red Hat, you know, ACM capabilities for cluster management up through, you know, AI for IT ops and automation and use of a common console across services. And so it's an exciting time because we've been able to align our portfolio, get consistency and delivery of the Red Hat capabilities across our full portfolio and then enable clients to progress to really efficient consumption of cloud. That's awesome, great stuff there. I got to ask you the question that's on probably your customers minds. They say, okay, Hilary, you got me, sold me on this, I get what's going on. I just got to go faster. How do I advance my hybrid cloud model faster? What are you going to do for me? What do you have within the Red Hat world and IBM world? How are you going to make me go faster? That's in a high quality way. Yeah, you know, we often like to start with an assessment of the application landscape because you move faster by moving strategically, right? So assessing applications and the opportunity to move most quickly into a cloud model, what to containerize first, what to invest in, lift and shift perspective, et cetera. So we help people look at what is strategic to move and where the return on investment will be the greatest. We help them also with migrations, right? So we can help jump in with additional skills and establish a cloud center of competency and other things like that that can help them move faster as well as move faster with us. And I think ultimately choosing the right portfolio for what is defined as cloud is so important. Having an open-based architecture and cloud deployment choice is so important so that you don't get stuck in where you made some of your initial decisions. And so I think those are kind of the three core components to how we're helping our clients move as quickly as possible and at the rate and pace that the current climate frankly demands of everyone. You know, I was joking with a friend the other night about databases and how, you know, generations, you have an argument about what is a database, what's it used for? And then when you kind of get to that argument, you all agree that a new database comes along and then it's for different functions, it's just the growth in the internet and computing. Same with cloud, you kind of see a parallel thing where it's like you debate what is cloud, why does it even exist, you know, people have different definitions that was, you know, you need a decade or so ago. And then now we're at almost another point where it's kind of another redefinition of, okay, what's next for cloud? It's almost an inflection point here again. So with that, I got to ask you as a fellow on IBM VP and CTO, what is the IBM cloud? Because if I'm going to have a discussion with IBM at the center of it, what does it mean to me? That's what people would like to know. How do you respond to that? Yeah, you know, I think two things. I think number one, to the question of accelerating people's journeys to the cloud, we are very focused within the IBM cloud business on our industry-specific programs on our work with our traditional enterprise client-based and regulated industries, things like what we're doing in cloud for financial services, where we are taking cloud and not just doing some sort of marketing, but doing technology which contextualizes cloud to tackle the difficult problems of those industries. So financial services, Talco, et cetera. And so I think that's really about next generation cloud, not cloud just for, oh, I'm consuming some SaaS and so it's going to be in the cloud, but SaaS and ISV capabilities and an organization's own capabilities delivered in a way appropriate to their industry and in a way that enables them to consume cloud faster. And I think along those lines then kind of second thing of where is cloud headed? The conversation in the industry around confidential computing I think is increasingly important. It's an area that we've invested now for several generations of technology capability. Confidential computing means being able to operate even in a cloud environment where there are others around but still have complete privacy and authority over what you're doing. And that extra degree of protection is so important right now. It's such a critical conversation with all of our clients. Obviously those and things like digital assets custody or healthcare records or other things like that are very concerned and focused about data privacy and protection. And these technologies are obvious to them in many cases that yes, they should take that extra step and leverage confidential computing and additional data protection. But really confidential computing we're seeing growing as a topic, zero trust, other models like that because everyone wants to know that not only are they moving faster because they're moving to cloud but they're doing so in a way that is without any compromise in their total security and their data protection on behalf of their clients. So it's exciting times on that point. It's so exciting just to think about the possibilities because trust more than ever now is we're on a global society whether it's cyber security or personal interactions to data, signing off on code. What's the immutability of it? I mean, it's a complete interplay of all the fun things of technology kind of coming together. Absolutely, yeah. There is so much coming together and confidential computing and realizing it has been a decade long journey for us, right? We brought our first products actually into cloud in 2019 but it's hardware, it's software, it's services. It's a lot of different things coming together but we've been able to bring them together bring them together at enterprise scale able to run entire databases and large workloads and pharmaceutical record system for Germany and customer records for Daimler and what we're doing with banks globally, et cetera. And so it's wonderful to see all of that work from our research division and our developers and our cloud teams kind of come together and come to fruition and really be real and be productizable. So it's very exciting times and it's a conversation that I think I'd encourage everyone to learn a little bit more about confidential computing. Hillary Hunter, thank you for coming on theCUBE. Vice President and CTO and IBM Fellow which is a big distinction at IBM. Congratulations and thanks for coming on theCUBE and sharing your insight. Always a pleasure to have you on an expert. Always great conversation, thanks for coming on. Thanks so much for having me, it was a pleasure. Okay, so CUBE's coverage of Red Hat Summit 21 of course IBM Think is right around the corner as well. So that's going to be another great event as well. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE bringing you all the action. Thanks for watching.