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Red Hat’s Christopher Smith on Open Source’s Role as Mission-Critical Foundation for Agencies

Christopher Smith, vice president and general manager of the North America public sector at Red Hat, said the transparency, portability and innovation that open source offers have made the technology a mission-critical foundation for federal agencies, companies and other organizations.

“Open source technologies evolve rapidly based on the diverse contributions from global companies, government agencies, universities and individuals,” Smith wrote.

“Furthermore, the code is transparent, and open source technologies have proven to be more secure based on that visibility into all components,” he added.

He noted that open source has removed silos, helped organizations shift away from legacy platforms and provided government agencies the flexibility the need when it comes to choosing partners and consumption frameworks.

Smith discussed how open source platform like Linux could enable agencies to manage multicloud and hybrid cloud environments and develop portable architectures that use other open source technologies.

“Portability gives organizations the ability to use the same architectures, underlying technologies, monitoring and security solutions, and human skills to manage mission-critical capabilities across all footprints,” he added.

He called on agencies to adopt an enterprise approach to automation and cited how open source could facilitate the transition to automation, which he said could enable the adoption of DevSecOps, platform engineering and other modern software development approaches and help improve information technology operations while allowing IT teams to focus on projects that advance government missions.

According to Smith, agencies should consider security, cloud operations, patching of network devices and servers and business processes part of their approach to enterprise automation.

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