Inna Kuznetsova, vice president, marketing and sales, Systems Software & ISVs, IBM, delivered a keynote at the Red Hat Summit. IBM was a premier sponsor of the event which took place in Boston last week.
The year 2011 is special for IBM because "it is our centennial," marking 100 years of innovation and progress, said Kuznetsova, who offered a brief overview of the some of the iconic moments of IBM's years of technological leadership while emphasizing that IBM's journey of innovation and leadership is continuing.
During the last 10-plus years, for example, IBM has helped drive Linux adoption in the enterprise as an active participant in the Linux community and a close partner of Red Hat. IBM is also partnering with Red Hat in advancing open virtualization and KVM (see article below). Open virtualization is important, she said, because it provides choice, lower cost, and interoperability.
If virtualization is the first step to a cloud, then open virtualization is the first step to an open cloud, said Kuznetsova. An ecosystem and community is building around this idea, and the same thing that happened to Linux will happen to KVM, and in a few years there will be no doubt about whether it is ready for prime time.
At the Red Hat Summit, Jean Staten Healy, director of Cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, also hosted an expert panel focused on open virtualization along with Dan Frye, vice president of Open Systems and Solution Development, IBM; Mike Richmond, technology planning director, Open Source Technology Center, Intel; Carl Trieloff, technical director, Cloud/Virtualization Business Unit, Red Hat; and Mårten Mickos, CEO, Eucalyptus Systems.
To access highlights from the Red Hat Summit, go to www.redhat.com/summit/highlights.