Red Hat's 2013 Will Center on Hybrid Cloud Services--and Support

It's the time of year when many writers and analysts are considering what lies ahead for leading technologies in the next 12 months, and Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat's often-quoted CEO, offered up his views on the matter in a State of the Union blog post in late December. It's worth reading, and not just for Whitehurst's views on where Red Hat is going. Among other things, Whitehurst remains adamant that in cloud computing--where Red Hat is placing a big bet on OpenStack and other emerging technologies--hybrid clouds will win.

"We have an all star customer list that features 80 percent of the global Fortune 500," notes Whitehurst in his State of the Union post. Not everyone realizes that Red Hat--focused primarily on Linux--has such pull with elite companies. In 2013, though, Red Hat is making a big bet on cloud computing and has already released a preview edition of its OpenStack solution. 

According to Whitehurst's post:

"The move to cloud computing represents a significant paradigm shift -a re-centralization of compute into large, managed data centers and the explosion of end point devices, from mobile phones to censors and beyond. And while some may feel like we’ve been talking about cloud computing and its potential for ages, we’re still in the early stages. In paradigm shifts such as this, historically, the early winners emerge as the long term winners. In the near and long term, open hybrid cloud will be the winner."

Whitehurst is right that the market and dynamics surrounding cloud computing are still young. And, virtualization and other technologies will help hybrid clouds succeed, as public and private implementations happen on single platforms, and companies run multiple operating systems. "From the operating system and virtualization to the application server, service-oriented architecture (SOA), business process management (BPM), storage, IaaS based on OpenStack – Red Hat and our partners have an opportunity to truly change enterprise technology by delivering disruptive technology with incredible economics," he writes.

Red Hat has slowed down as a market darling, though, and Barron's recently noted that Whitehurst and others have been selling shares in the company. 

One of Red Hat's biggest challenges in the new year, as it matures its cloud computing strategy, will be to offer state-of-the-art support for cloud deployments. That's how Red Hat has succeeded as a company focused on Linux, and it's best chance for competing in the crowded cloud computing space.