Opening keynote: Towards a new era of innovation
The Red Hat Summit has always been a must-attend event, but this year, the bar was set even higher right from the start with the opening keynote. This session stood out for its energy, content, and vision. Let's take a closer look at this masterful opening.
From the very first minutes, Gianni Anguilletti, Chief Revenue Officer for the MED region, captivated the audience. His words painted a picture of a future where cloud-native development is not just a trend, but the norm. His vision encompassed an IT ecosystem where hybrid cloud infrastructure enables businesses to navigate with agility between local and global needs. His concrete illustrations, punctuated with examples of success stories, showed that this was not a utopia, but a tangible reality for those who embrace this revolution.
Recognition in the Gartner Magic Quadrant: proof of leadership.
When Gianni mentioned RedHat's leading position in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for container management in 2023, it wasn't to brag, but to show the results of years of dedication to innovation. This recognition was a testament to the company's commitment to its customers and its ability to anticipate market trends.
Particular emphasis was placed on the culture of innovation, setting the tone for the conference.
A culture of innovation: Red Hat's DNA.
But innovation, as Gianni pointed out, is not just technological. It is also cultural. RedHat has not only innovated in terms of products, but has also cultivated an internal culture where ideas are valued and every employee is encouraged to push the boundaries of what is possible. It is this combination of technology and culture that has propelled RedHat to the forefront of the industry.
Talent management: a challenge to be met
Claire Delalande, VP of EMEA Marketing, added another dimension to the discussion by addressing the crucial issue of talent management. In an era of rapid digital transformation, technology alone is not enough. Claire emphasized that the future will belong to companies that can attract, retain, and train the best talent. She discussed RedHat's initiatives to create an inclusive, fulfilling, and stimulating work environment where talent can truly thrive.
Moving to the cloud: a necessity rather than a choice.
The transition to the cloud is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. David Szegedi emphasized this importance by presenting various innovations from RedHat. One of the most notable is undoubtedly RedHat Insight, which uses artificial intelligence to diagnose and remedy operational issues. Furthermore, the bold prediction that 70% of recurring tasks will be managed by AI by 2027 serves as a wake-up call for companies to adapt.
Scale up with a "move to cloud" strategy
When leaders such as AXA, Microsoft, SCC, and Red Hat come together to discuss cloud migration, you know you're in for a high-quality discussion. This roundtable featured Thomas Lemarchand from AXA France, Xavier Perret from Microsoft, William Saadi from SCC Hyperscale France, and David Szegedi from Red Hat.
The importance of integrating all stakeholders is fundamental. Explaining to each sector (Dev, Ops, business lines, business) why these technologies are beneficial is crucial. It has been suggested that an internal team be formed dedicated to designing and automating cloud deployments. This places IT firmly at the service of the business.
The question is no longer "Why migrate to the cloud?" (because the benefits are obvious) but "How?"
Several approaches were discussed:
- Lift & Shift: This is the first step, which often involves outsourcing rather than a real move to the cloud.
- Rehosting: This involves moving workloads followed by refactoring services.
- Reflection before deployment: The idea is to think first about the changes and modifications needed rather than simply deploying as is to the cloud.
- Transition to hybrid: This approach involves supporting the transition to the cloud, combining the best of both worlds.
Open source: a guarantee of sovereignty
With the participation of government representatives and key industry players, the discussions addressed the need for states to support and adoptopen source in order to ensure their digital independence.
Philippe Latombe, member of parliament and member of the Law Commission at the National Assembly, describes "sovereignty" as "the ability to make a choice and maintain that choice in the future." This concept is crucial at a time when dependence on a single technology provider can hinder decision-making autonomy and lead to vendor lock-in.vendor lock-in), hardware dependency, and loss of knowledge.
What are the challenges and solutions?
It is imperative to act quickly to guarantee sovereignty, while remaining competitive and managing legal risks. But how can these imperatives be reconciled?
The prevailing conclusion was that adopting open source is crucial to ensuring digital sovereignty, but it requires investment and ongoing support.
DevSecOps feedback at BNP Paribas: towards inclusive modernization
BNP Paribas, one of the world's leading banks, has always been at the forefront of technological developments to offer the best to its customers and employees. Christophe Chéreau, head of the IT division, gives us an overview of the successful integration of DevSecOps into the group's IT infrastructure.
The Importance of Including Developers in DevOps
It has become imperative to create an environment where developers do not just "code," but are also actively involved in DevOps processes. BNP Paribas has understood this by implementing DevX programs designed to enhance the developer experience (DevX or "Developer Experience").
Diversified DevX courses for better integration
To ensure wider adoption and maximum effectiveness, BNP has created several DevX tracks:
- DevX Open: Designed for those new to automation and programming.
- DevX Cloud Native: A deep dive into cloud-native applications.
- DevX IOPS/SRE: Focused on infrastructure operations and site reliability engineering responsibilities.
- DevX Mobile: For developing optimal mobile applications.
- DevX Tester: Focused on test automation and quality assurance.
Standardize the developer experience with a service catalog (IDP)
To accelerate adoption and standardize the experience, BNP Paribas has launched a service catalog offering templates for integrating various services such as Quarkus, ArgoCD, Jenkins, and Node.js into Red Hat Developer Hub (Internal Developer Platform).
BNP Paribas' journey towards an integrative DevSecOps approach highlights the importance of thoughtful, developer-centric modernization. By combining the best technologies with proven practices, BNP Paribas is positioning itself as a leader not only in banking, but also in technological innovation.
Feedback from major clients such as BNP Paribas and La Poste has been particularly instructive. It has highlighted the need not only to adopt innovative technologies, but also to integrate them effectively in order to achieve their business objectives.
La Poste's presentation on XaaS ( Anything as a Service) is a perfect example of how companies can optimize and automate their infrastructure to offer better services to their customers.
The Post Office in the digital age: a deep dive into the world of the XaaS platform
La Poste has always evoked memories of letters, parcels, and a service that is close to the people. But in the digital age, how has such an iconic institution transformed itself to remain relevant? The answer: by adopting an innovative model called XaaS (Anything as a Service) and harnessing the powerof Ansible Automation Platform and OpenShift.
As France's largest employer with 238,000 employees, La Poste Group is much more than a postal service. It is a diversified company that has successfully leveraged digital technology, with inclusion and digital trust as its strategic pillars.
The XaaS Platform: Revolutionizing Service Delivery
XaaS is not just a technology, it is a paradigm shift. The group has launched a portal offering a whole range of services in a digital catalog.
Integration of Ansible Automation Platform and OpenShift: these platforms have enabled the automation of all infrastructure, platform, security, and management operations. This has benefited all teams, offering them unparalleled flexibility and speed.
The numbers speak for themselves: with 11,500 virtual machines, 20 OpenShift clusters, 39,000 job templates executed each month, and 3,256 users, the impact of the XaaS platform is undeniable.
Agile teams: Adopting a SAFE approach, the group restructured itself into eight agile teams, working together to create a robust cloud service offering.
The transition to AAP2: towards a brighter future
The migration to Ansible Automation Platform 2 (AAP2) marked a significant milestone. Fifty-one roles were migrated across 18 collections, and the entire process required only three months of business testing. This transition also highlighted the importance of change management and sponsor support for the success of the project.
The introduction of XaaS and the adoption of modern technologies have been a huge success for La Poste. The lessons learned highlight the importance of having a strong sponsor, responding to growing consumer needs, and adopting an agile approach to prioritizing what to automate.
La Poste's evolution towards an XaaS model illustrates a profound transformation. It proves that even the most established institutions can evolve, innovate, and thrive in the digital age. As the group continues to grow and develop, one thing is certain: the future is bright, and La Poste is ready to deliver—literally and metaphorically!
NumSpot: a committed European cloud
The digital age is characterized by rapid technological expansion, a multitude of cloud providers, and growing concerns about security and dependency. Xavier Vaccari, Vice President of NumSpot, recently unveiled a new approach during a NumSpot session, advocating for "trusted open source." Here is an overview of this revolutionary initiative.
NumSpot has positioned itself as a European cloud provider, aspiring to high security standards. What sets it apart is its mixed public-private ownership, ensuring transparency and robust governance for all stakeholders.
Open Source: a pillar of trust and sovereignty
For NumSpot, using open source is not simply a technological decision, it is a commitment to greater trust. By adopting open source, the company aims to establish a pillar of trust and sovereignty, developing the following points:
- Building trust: By enabling open code review, NumSpot ensures that users can verify the security and functionality of their systems for themselves.
- Ensuring sovereignty: Being dependent on proprietary solutions, particularly from suppliers outside Europe, presents risks. By adopting open source, NumSpot enables organizations to operate their workloads securely while remaining in control of their digital destiny.
- Avoiding the Lock-in Trap: One of the major concerns for any organization adopting technology solutions is the risk of "lock-in"—being stuck with a particular solution without the possibility of easy migration. Vaccari emphasizes the importance of making technological building blocks not only functional but also accessible. Thus, NumSpot doesn't just want to offer solutions; they want to share the "building blocks" that work to benefit and enrich the ecosystem as a whole.
- Enriching the Open Source Community: NumSpot's ultimate goal is to energize and enrich the open source community. Xavier emphasizes that it is important not to isolate oneself. The beauty of open source lies in its ability to evolve and innovate thanks to the contributions of many different players. Collaborating, rather than working in silos, is the way forward.
The NumSpot initiative is a reminder that open source is not just a technological option, but a path toward greater transparency, trust, and sovereignty. In a world where technological dependence is a growing concern, players like NumSpot are leading the way toward a more open and collaborative digital future.
Ansible Lightspeed and the Event-Driven Approach: The Future of Automation
Ansible, the renowned automation platform, has a new update to present. In collaboration with IBM, Red Hat has introduced "Ansible Lightspeed with IBM Watson Code Assistant" and a new feature, "Event-Driven Ansible." These innovations promise to revolutionize the way developers and businesses approach automation.
Ansible Lightspeed with IBM Watson Code Assistant
The integration of artificial intelligence into the field of automation has become an exciting area of exploration. Ansible Lightspeed takes a step forward by incorporating generative artificial intelligence into playbook development. Playbook.
- Content generation: With Ansible Lightspeed, developers can request to generate a playbook from a natural language request. Imagine writing, "Find me a playbook similar to what I'm writing," and getting an instant suggestion.
- Content optimization: Instead of manually browsing through thousands of lines of code, users can request a review of their playbook to improve it.
- Content explanation: The feature also enables developers to understand the impact and actions of a particular playbook.
The IBM Watson Code assistant is based on the watsonX foundation model for Ansible automation. The experience offered with this integration sees an improvement in the overall efficiency of an organization's automation efforts.
Event-Driven Ansible: Remediation Through Automation
Until now, Ansible's traditional approach was based on pre-planned playbooks. With Event-Driven Ansible, the dynamics change: playbooks can be triggered in response to specific events.
Rather than executing playbooks on a regular schedule, they can be triggered by a specific event. This significantly reduces the time required to observe, plan, and respond to events. This approach allows important events to be identified and responded to with rule-based actions.
The potential for use is vast, from basic network troubleshooting tasks to automating responses to security incidents. In other words, Event-Driven Ansible can take automation to the next level, offering unmatched responsiveness and flexibility.
This approach is particularly powerful when it comes to remediation. Imagine a scenario where a system detects an intrusion or attempted security breach. Instead of waiting for an administrator to analyze the alert and take action, Event-Driven Ansible can be programmed to immediately trigger a remediation playbook. This may include isolating a compromised system, notifying the relevant parties, or initiating a series of security checks.
Similarly, for infrastructure management, if a critical component begins to show signs of failure, a playbook can be triggered to restart the service, move the workload, or even order additional resources.
This approach therefore offers multiple advantages:
- Increased responsiveness: The ability to act instantly in response to an event enables much faster incident management and remediation.
- Reduction of human error: By automating responses to specific events, the risk of human error in decision-making under pressure is minimized.
- Resource optimization: Instead of constantly monitoring systems for anomalies, teams can focus on higher value-added tasks, knowing that automation is in place to handle incidents.
The future of automation looks bright with Ansible Lightspeed and Event-Driven Ansible. These innovations could not only bridge the automation skills gap, but also accelerate return on investment for businesses. With robust AI integration such as IBM Watson and an event-driven approach, Ansible is well positioned to redefine the automation landscape.
Conclusion
Red Hat Summit Connect Paris 2023 offered a clear vision of current and future trends in the IT industry. The importance of innovation, cloud transition, security, and sovereignty were dominant themes. Through various presentations and demonstrations, it became clear that to succeed in the digital age, you need to be agile, secure, and open to innovation.
The debate on sovereignty has highlighted the importance of technological independence.Open source, thanks to its transparency and ability to avoid vendor lock-in, has been presented as a pillar of this sovereignty.
Finally, Event-Driven Ansible revolutionizes the way we perceive automation, transforming it from a simple operational efficiency tool into an active and vigilant digital bodyguard. As technology environments become increasingly dynamic and interconnected, solutions like this will be essential to ensuring both resilience and security.
As a privileged observer, I eagerly await to see how these trends will materialize in the coming years. One thing is certain: with companies like RedHat at the helm, the future of IT looks bright.
