Vancouver 2015 Keynotes: Red Hat Keynote

[0:03] So in a few minutes, we're going to hear from Mark McLaughlin, It was only a few years ago, OpenStack was just an idea between Rackspace and NASA, to build clouds that are massively scalable and simple to implement. Now, that idea is empowering a community to change an industry. But, technology alone is just technology. Technology alone does not ignite change. Technology alone does not push society forward.

[0:44] People do. And by developing technology openly, more people can participate. Are cloud companies profitable or just hype? We don't see OpenStack having a reality check. OpenStack is not in its limits. There are thousands of engineers and hundreds of companies working together to help our collective customers move forward, solvable at a rate of innovation that could never be accomplished by one organization alone. Together we press forward. Together we change the game.

[1:36] Please welcome OpenStack Technical Director Red Hat, Mark McLaughlin. My goodness, there's a lot of people. Okay, good morning everybody. Um... The last time I was up here in Hong Kong, I used my keynote. to talk about my personal belief in the promise of open source. The-- strengths that a diverse community brings to a project. and how we could expect OpenStack to evolve in the years ahead to an expansive umbrella of innovation in cloud infrastructure.

[2:13] More recently, and with some mixed emotions, I've completely changed my role at Red Hat. And these days, I've moved my focus away from the upstream project. and instead I'm helping to manage our OpenStack engineering team working closely with our partners, and really helping our customers be successful with OpenStack. Thank you. In some ways, I think my own change in role kind of mirrors Red Hat's approach to creating technology the open source way. I remember back in 2011 at one of our early OpenStack engineering team meetings, laying out for the rest of the team how we could all expect our focus to be change over the years as we got more into OpenStack.

[2:57] And I really see our approach to new projects as kind of being a three-phased thing, where each phase builds on the previous one. So the first phase, participation. Our initial goal is always to participate. And by that, I mean we look for ways to make meaningful contributions but also to build a really close affinity with the communities standing behind the code. This is kind of where we play a Jedi mind trick on ourselves and start to talk about the community as us.

[3:27] rather than them. and it's where we learn to put aside our red hat, and really, truly represent the interests of the project as community insiders. So, moving on from that. Next, we build out our ability to deliver a high quality OpenStack distribution. And we've taken a dual approach here with OpenStack. With RDO, we've created an open community of people interested in running OpenStack on Red Hat distributions.

[3:59] This is where users can take a packaged version of OpenStack that stays close to the upstream code base, and allows these users to really engage closely with the upstream project. Thank you. with RHEL OpenStack Platform. We take what RDO has produced, spend a lot of time validating the many possible configurations that our customers use. and working closely with our partners to certify their technologies, and really preparing this whole organization to be ready for the next step.

[4:30] to make customers successful with the new release right out of the gate. And the final stage then is with the product in our customers' hands, We aim to work closely with our customers to ensure that they succeed with their goals for their OpenStack deployments. And so we support our customers in the broadest possible sense of the word. And we're now deep in this latter phase with hundreds of customers of the RHEL OpenStack platform depending on us daily. And all of this has a much broader meaning for me on a very personal level.

[5:07] I've chosen to dedicate my time to really proving that open collaboration is a great way of building technology. that from a community of diverse interests springs some fantastic innovation. that an open ecosystem really delivers great freedom, value, and choice for users of the project. and that it's perfectly possible for successful businesses to both compete and collaborate within such an open ecosystem. For me, central to all of this, is demonstrating the commercial value that a pure play open source vendor like Red Hat can deliver to users.

[5:48] And so I've been at Red Hat over 11 years now, so I think I have some pretty good insight into why customers choose to work with us. All right. Sometimes it's because of our real commitment to the projects. that we're shipping. and our ability to represent customer needs in those communities. Other times it's because of our emphasis on long-term stability and security. Other times it's the reassurance of our certified partner ecosystem. A lot of the times it's actually about our subscription model and the way that model empowers our users and really requires us to deliver continuous value to our customers.

[6:31] Sometimes when I'm asked the very simplistic question, if the software is free, What do people pay Red Hat for? And And, you know, if I have to quickly answer that, I lean on the most easy to explain answer. And that's Red Hat customers rely on Red Hat for our deep expertise and our technical support. Because modern software is incredibly complex. And if your business depends on a particular technology, You inevitably look to lean on a vendor for their expertise so that you can get the most out of the technology.

[7:03] and also so that vendor... is there ready to be available to you at a moment's notice if something goes wrong? And so with this change of role, it's really only in recent months that I see on a daily basis this aspect of Red Hat's business. I've always had a particular curiosity for what happens when a customer experiences an outage, and how we rally a diverse group of experts to get a customer back up and running. Thank you.

[7:35] There are many ways to explain the concept of technical support. But for me, what brings real meaning to the term is the people behind the support commitment. We're talking here about technical experts We're looking to use their deep expertise and knowledge to really get a customer back on track. We're talking about engineers with genuine empathy for customers' needs. Our support model is not one of deflection.

[8:05] We really aim to engage our customers with our expertise. whether that be arming you with whatever you need to handle the latest security vulnerability, whether that be Heartbleed or Shellshock or like last week, Venom. are on those occasions that you do need to pick up the phone. that you quickly get through to a specialized engineer who has access to and a deep familiarity with the code in question. So, at Red Hat, we don't see our support team as overhead. We really see them as an extension of our engineering team.

[8:43] Because it's really-- through the feedback we get from supporting our customers, that we gain the ability to really improve the software. And so I want to take a couple of minutes now to show a short video which should give some insight into the human side I've... what providing technical support means at Red Hat. because we have a support model, but to me it's really the humans behind that model that make the difference in the end. And so we're going to hear quickly from some support engineers and product engineers about how we all work together to really help get a customer back on track.

[9:19] So, play the video. We want to engage with our customers. Working with our customers is the best way that we know that we're doing a good job. It's also the best way that we know to shape the future direction of the product. I think the level of expertise you'll find in our support organization is above and beyond a lot of other companies. I mean, I look at our support organization as being an extension of engineering. Our mentality is we want to be a partner with the customer and really work through the problems with them. With OpenStack, it's critically important. to have that relationship with our customers because the complexity of the software. We understand that OpenStack is not a one-size-fits-all solution. We can't just develop an OpenStack product and have the exact thing delivered to every customer. Support is often a very one-dimensional process where you have a problem and you pick up the phone. At Red Hat, support is a much more dynamic, collaborative process. It's very much aligned with kind of the open source philosophy of, you know, talk about it, get that feedback, but then make it happen. When OpenStack customers call or open a ticket, they're going to be immediately engaged with somebody who has been trained, who has been certified, and who has experience working with OpenStack and working with our customers. We all feel very personally committed to solving customer issues. There's also the aspect of it's our code, we helped write it, and so we want it to be the best code it possibly can be. I think there's a

[10:49] that comes out in the way that we support our customers, because we're all very thankful that we get to work for a company that values open source and open development. - OpenStack really pulls together all of these different pieces into this really fun amalgam of people trying new things, people breaking old models and no one's telling us no. We have this ability. If someone has an idea, if someone wants to do some new as a service, go write it, submit it, share it. It's very inclusive. It's very fun.

[11:37] So, you've had a brief glimpse into what providing support means for us at Red Hat. was just because, you know, I think we're in a really unique position with OpenStack. We, all of us here together, have built an incredibly powerful set of technologies that And OpenStack in turn brings together a whole myriad of other technologies. And yet, again, on top of that, we're seeing many technologies building on OpenStack, integrating with it, and really using it as a platform.

[12:09] But if you're a user of OpenStack, and you want to build a cloud to run your business on, There's a lot of expertise there required. and supporting that cloud into the long term. is an even greater challenge. And what I really wanted to get across today is Red Hat takes that part of the challenge incredibly seriously. And we want to be there for you as you embark on your OpenStack adventure. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mark.

[12:39] Really appreciate your help. And I want to thank actually all of our headline sponsors. for making this all possible today. And next.