Everyone has an opinion on cloud. If you talk to a cloud service provider, they might say cloud is the only way to go at this point in time. If you talk to a legacy hardware company, they might tell you that you still need a hardware base for maximum security. And then some companies from both camps are seeing the writing on the wall and deciding to join forces to offer the kind of combined solutions that meet customer demands.

Cisco Systems, Inc. and Red Hat, Inc. are just such a combo, collaborating to offer a converged hardware/software platform with the trusted hardware of Cisco and the state-of-the-art open-source solutions of Red Hat. You may not think of Cisco as an open-source provider, but that is about to change if Vijay Venugopal, director of product management at Cisco Systems, has his way.

“Our open-source strategy has evolved a lot over the last five years,” he told Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, adding that being more active in the open-source community is now a main objective for Cisco.

IT’s existential crisis

Going open source, integrating cloud on a full-time or as-needed basis (aka cloud bursting) is about more than keeping up with the technological Joneses or having the latest toys.

According to Chris Wright, VP and chief technologist of the Office of Technology at Red Hat, “The service providers are seeing an economic reality that doesn’t really map out well into the future.” He added that explosive data growth and consumption through their networks don’t just encourage a move away from hardware-centric — they demand it.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of OpenStack Summit — Austin. And make sure to weigh in during theCUBE’s live coverage at the event by joining in on CrowdChat.

Photo by SiliconANGLE