Red Hat Inc. unveiled the latest iteration of its trademark red fedora logo this month. Yet when IBM Corp.’s chief executive officer, Ginni Rometty (pictured, with Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst), took the keynote stage at the Red Hat Summit on Tuesday afternoon, she went out of her way to reassure the audience that after acquiring the open-source powerhouse in October, the color would stay red and not become blue.

“Red Hat will stay separate,” said Stu Miniman, co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the second day of the Red Hat Summit in Boston. “IBM is not going to ‘blue-wash’ the company, which is the term when they would normally integrate and take over. They understand that IBM’s scale should enable them, and there will be more collaboration.”

Miniman was joined by John Walls, co-host of theCUBE, and they discussed IBM’s interest in keeping Red Hat separate and a new collaboration with Microsoft (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

New level for IBM

The acquisition of Red Hat for $34 billion has been viewed by analysts as a key move for IBM to strengthen its ability to become a major player in the multicloud world. Rometty emphasized that in her remarks at the Red Hat gathering, noting that “buying them to destroy them” was not in her immediate plans.

“This gets IBM in the game on a whole new level,” Walls said. “I would imagine that message is being communicated throughout the ranks at IBM.”

In addition to the remarks by IBM’s Rometty, the Red Hat event also featured a personal appearance by Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella. His visit coincided with the announcement that Nadella’s company and Red Hat would collaborate on a joint project to help developers deploy serverless, event-driven containers.

“When you think about Microsoft, you usually think about Windows,” Miniman said. “Satya’s goal is when you think Microsoft, he wants you thinking about Azure and artificial intelligence. That blending of worlds is what we see.”

Here’s the complete video analysis, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit 2019. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Red Hat Summit. Neither Red Hat Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Red Hat