Pattern Energy Group, which is currently working on setting up the largest wind energy project in Chile, is using Gluster software to power its in-house weather analytics. Red Hat acquired Gluster a few months ago and now offers the firm’s open storage management platform under the Red Hat Storage title.

Pattern relies on big data analytics to predict weather three to five days in advance across the different projects it manages worldwide. This company uses this insight mainly to see when its turbines may be at risk and carry out preventative and repair maintenance in time.

“Our business is based on a technology that produces a large amount of data, requiring constant uptime in order to monitor and produce wind and energy estimates,” said Chad Ringley, manager of atmospheric modeling at Pattern Energy. “With the way we’re using the system now, it’s supporting our day-to-day operations, meeting time constraints and allowing forecasts to run automated on the system.”

Pattern uses Red Hat Storage for wind pattern and solar energy research purposes as well. Its team can now run these studies in-house instead of having to pay about $15k-$25k to a third party contractor per study, and has already carried out a few hundred.

Red Hat’s fresh acquisition of Gluster is already starting to earn back its pricetag, considering it announced the Red Hat Storage Software Appliance only last week.

So it’s natural the Linux distributor is already planning to buy another company. A report by the 451 Group suggests that the next acquisition target will be a devops provider that would help strengthen Red Hat’s position as a cloud vendor.

In addition, CEO Jim Whitehurst hinted that Jaspersoft may be one of the firms that will be integrated into Red Hat as a part of a series of acquisitions kicked off by the Gluster deal.