As computing trends like virtualization, containers or edge continue to create churn in the industry, companies are hard-pressed to maintain a competitive edge. Rob Young (pictured, right), manager of virtualization product and strategy at Red Hat Inc., says his company’s position as an operating system agnostic to the computing infrastructure, virtual or otherwise, enables it to deliver value no matter where the market goes.

“If you look at the dynamic in the market, a lot of people think there’s virtualization or containers, but this is really a symbiotic, complementary relationship. … Because Red Hat is already comfortable operating in this open-source environment in this way, we think we’re just in a very good position to lead in both areas,” Young said.

Young and Rex Backman (pictured, left), senior principal product marketing manager of virtualization at Red Hat, spoke with host Stu Miniman (@stu) and guest host John Troyer (@jtroyer) of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this week’s VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

API economy

Red Hat is leveraging its Enterprise Linux operating system as a foundational pillar for both virtualization and containers to add value to a multitude of other companies, Young explained. The key to enabling interoperability with other solution providers lies in their application program interfaces.

“We look at it not only as a software solution, but also as a paradigm shift to more openness, APIs. Things are more generic, so if you want to plug into a common framework for management, as an example, or deployment, you can easily do that via the open APIs that are available in the open-source community.”

Young shared an example of how this open-source approach enables Red Hat Enterprise Linux with compatibility across the full range of solution offerings.

“We provide a management solution called CloudForms. With that platform that’s part of the Red Hat stack and solution, we allow customers to manage not only their virtualized environment but also their public or private clouds and AWS as well,” Young stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMworld 2017. Neither VMware Inc. nor Red Hat Inc. have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE