By The center of innovation in business software has shifted toward users in the corporate world, according to Jim Whitehurst, CEO of open-source software pioneer Red Hat Inc. “If you look at so much that is happening in open source software, it is users driving more innovation than vendors,” Mr. Whitehurst told CIO Journal. Open source software is free to use, although companies such as Red Hat build businesses by offering services that support open code. During the last 24 years, the Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat has built a company with more than $2 billion a year in revenues, supporting an open source Linux operating system, so-called middleware and more. More recently, the company has embraced the adoption of software containers, which during the last few years rapidly have been replacing servers and virtual machines as more efficient ways to run software. “Ten years ago, open source software was all about commoditizing IT … To me, the things that have happened in open source during the last five years are more interesting. Users have developed IT infrastructure” he said, citing the development of open-source distributed computing as a way for consumer internet giants to manage unprecedented volumes of data. Almost all of the innovation in machine learning and other areas of emerging IT are the result of “large IT users solving their own problems,” said Mr. Whitehurst, a veteran of The Boston Consulting Group and Delta Air Lines. Today, he said, “open source … is not so much about cost, as it is about innovation.” The adoption of software containers has been at the top of the CIO agenda during the last few years, according to Mr. Whitehurst. Containers are similar in concept to containerized physical shipping, which allowed for the fast movement of goods from ships to rail cars and trucks in standardized steel boxes. Software containers, which allow pieces of applications to be distributed across any sort of device, are viewed as a way to reduce the cost of running software and make software developers more efficient. “If a developer is 20% more efficient, than feature velocity is 20% more efficient. At a time when more and more companies are digitally enabled, that developer efficiency is critical and increases the value of IT to the business,” he said. The adoption of machine learning is about to accelerate in similar fashion, according to Mr. Whitehurst. Only about 1% of software developers currently employ machine learning in their work, he said. That percentage will rise to about one third of all developers during the next few years, Mr. Whitehurst predicted. As adoption rises, machine learning is likely to become integrated into common applications such as planners, and will accelerate the adoption of newer interfaces such as voice and facial recognition. Follow @steve_rosenbush
Users are driving innovation in the open-source sector and machine learning will benefit, according to Whitehurst , CEO of open-source software firm Red Hat . He said the idea of software containers, which allowed "pieces of applications" to be distributed to any sort of device, brought about solutions to many IT problems. Red Hat predicted the adoption of machine learning as a result of open-source innovation will rise from Only about 1% of software developers to about one third third during Ten years ago .