Subscribe to the feed

For the sixth year running, we have reached out to our customers to hear where they are in their technology journey, and where they wish to go in the next year. For the 2020-focused survey, we received more than 870 qualified responses1 from Red Hat customers from around the world. They've weighed in about their challenges, strategies, and technologies they are planning to pursue in the next year and we're eager to share the results with you in our report. 

Some of the top takeaways this year are:

  1. Active digital transformation projects continue to rise.

  2. Companies are recognizing the importance of culture.

  3. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AI/ML) are of high interest.

Hybrid leads cloud strategy

According to the survey, hybrid cloud is the most common term used to describe our customers' cloud strategy. 31% say "hybrid" describes their strategy best, 21% are leading with a private cloud approach, and only 4% declared a public cloud first strategy. In the report we break this down even further by region, and find that there's some big differences in North America and EMEA when it comes to private and hybrid cloud plans. 

Seeing the value of the Open Organization

Red Hat has been touting the value of the open organization for some time now, and it seems that a significant number of our customers agree. 42% of the respondents say that they're in some stage of embracing an open organization culture, while 12% are undecided. Only 29% say they have no plans to evolve their culture. 

AI/ML moving to the forefront

Last year, blockchain topped the list of emerging tech workloads our customers voiced an interest in. This year? It's relegated to fourth place with just 12% saying it would be a likely workload. 19% of the respondents said the Internet of Things (IoT), and 21% said that serverless or Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) were in their plans. 

The top of the heap, though, is AI/ML, which wasn't even in the top three last year. We're keeping an eye on edge computing this year as well, and won't be surprised if that creeps up a bit higher in the list in the 2021 survey.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves! There's much more in the results from this year's Red Hat Global Customer Tech Outlook. Download the report and find out what we learned from our customers.

[1] The term “qualified” means those who completed a majority of the survey questions.

About the author

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver reliable and high-performing Linux, hybrid cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies.


Red Hat helps customers integrate new and existing IT applications, develop cloud-native applications, standardize on our industry-leading operating system, and automate, secure, and manage complex environments. Award-winning support, training, and consulting services make Red Hat a trusted adviser to the Fortune 500. As a strategic partner to cloud providers, system integrators, application vendors, customers, and open source communities, Red Hat can help organizations prepare for the digital future.

Read full bio
UI_Icon-Red_Hat-Close-A-Black-RGB

Browse by channel

automation icon

Automation

The latest on IT automation for tech, teams, and environments

AI icon

Artificial intelligence

Updates on the platforms that free customers to run AI workloads anywhere

open hybrid cloud icon

Open hybrid cloud

Explore how we build a more flexible future with hybrid cloud

security icon

Security

The latest on how we reduce risks across environments and technologies

edge icon

Edge computing

Updates on the platforms that simplify operations at the edge

Infrastructure icon

Infrastructure

The latest on the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform

application development icon

Applications

Inside our solutions to the toughest application challenges

Original series icon

Original shows

Entertaining stories from the makers and leaders in enterprise tech