Summit expert Q&A
by Ruth Suehle
This morning instead of a keynote, experts from throughout Red Hat gathered for a Q&A panel:
- Craig Muzilla
- Iain Gray
- Paul Cormier
- Katrinka McCallum
- Brian Stevens
- Scott Crenshaw
We’ll be posting video soon of this session along with the other keynotes. Until then, here’s a quick summary of what the experts had to say on a few of the questions:
On Red Hat’s patent policy
Paul: We won’t protect patents for our own good. We do it for the upstream, and we do it for the proliferation of open source.
The Iced Tea project recently passed Sun’s compliance test. How does Red Hat look to use open Java with no encumbrances?
Craig: We’ve been an active member in OpenJDK because it’s right for the industry. Sun has done the right thing by opening it. We are actively looking at using it within the JBoss product line and leveraging the Red Hat Enterprise Linux side of the business to make them work together, making it more attractive for our customers.
What is the most interesting question or discussion you’ve had at the Summit?
Iain: At Iain’s Booth, many people were asking about new products, esp MRG. Some of the questions were from beta customers. Many had just come from sessions about new technology, and they were interested in finding out about using those things. And there were a lot of questions about virtualization.
Paul: The thing I’ve heard over and over: “We didn’t realize how many open source projects beyond the operating system were ready for prime time.” Also a lot of questions about where we’re going next and the products we’re bringing to market.
Katrinka: The most popular question I’ve heard: How do I find the Spacewalk site? (It’s spacewalk.redhat.com–the open source Satellite project we announced this week.)
What’s the demand for virtualization? What is Red Hat seeing in that area?
Scott: It’s one of the hottest topics in enterprises, and even mid-size organizations. There is a wave of production use around server consolidation, and a lot of interest in wider deployment. Companies are grappling with the ramifications of security, risk policy, management, balancing workloads. So we have rich conversations with customers who deploy virtualization, and almost every one has plans to make it a core part of their IT architecture.
Paul: One of the things I see frequently in the press that limits the picture–the biggest use case you see is server consolidation. And I think people aren’t really seeing that that’s just one of many. Others include high availability, virtual desktop, cloud computing. Virtualization is the foundation to enable that style of comptuing. Many uses are in their infancy; many haven’t been implemented yet. I think it’s going to be the mainstream. It’s the next generation of the operating system.
Scott: One of the impediments is economic. If you have to pay so much to virtualize a server, there’s only so much you can do with it. So our solution is to build it in–it’s available on every server. Think to when we used to buy TCP stacks separately. When they were integrated, new use cases, new paradigms came up. So I think we’re on the verge of transformation as virtualization is implemented ubiquitously without the barriers that were there a year or two ago.
The video will be posted to the Summit homepage.