Tech Interviews

RedHat Summit Connect 2025: A discussion with Ed Hoppitt and Adrian Pickering

Published

5 months ago

April 25, 2025

Exclusive Interview with Ed Hoppitt, EMEA Director – Value Strategy, App and Cloud Platforms at Red Hat & Adrian Pickering, Regional General Manager, MENA & Enterprise Segment Lead for CEMEA at Red Hat

Having worked in global telecom and advised some of the world’s largest enterprises, how have these experiences shaped your approach to developing IT solutions?
Ed: I believe that designing and running operational IT over many years gives one a deep understanding of what truly matters to a customer, especially those partnering with Red Hat. This background enables me to connect with our customers on a level where they feel understood regarding their pain points. Today’s biggest challenge for enterprise IT is building systems that are predictable, replicable, and standardized—yet able to scale effectively.

When you look at what Red Hat offers and how we help enterprises build these solutions, our focus is rooted in leveraging the open source community. We invest in projects that we know will create tremendous value for our enterprise customers, taking those projects upstream, incorporating them into the Red Hat portfolio, and industrializing them into platforms such as OpenShift. Customers choose platforms like OpenShift because they represent best-of-breed choices, delivering stability, reliability, predictability, and scalability. With my operational IT background, I appreciate just how crucial these outcomes are for every customer I speak with.

This year’s Red Hat Summit focuses on curiosity and turning acquired knowledge into practical application. It’s about transforming acquired knowledge into practical applications. Through this, what key message are you hoping to leave with the audience this year?
Adrian: I view curiosity as the foundation for working with our customers to truly understand their vision—where they want to be 18, 24, 30, or even 36 months down the line. It’s about gaining a clear grasp of the business challenges they face or the new markets they wish to serve in the future. We then align our best capabilities to support them along that journey, keeping cost efficiency in mind. This might involve modernizing infrastructure, existing applications, or even building new applications that open doors to entirely new customer segments or solutions.

A great example of this is our work with the Dubai Health Authority, who were on stage at Summit Connect Dubai. When we engaged with them, we took the time to deeply understand the challenges they were trying to address for the citizens and then brought not only our technical products but also our expertise in project management, implementation, training, and knowledge transfer. I’m very proud of our achievements over the years, and I believe that in doing so, we add significant value for our customers.

Ed: To add another perspective, the most compelling conversations I have with customers often begin with discussions that don’t initially center on technology. They start with, “I want to imagine a world where things are different—where you can help me achieve something extraordinary.” For instance, with Red Hat OpenShift AI, we collaborated with the US Department of Veterans Affairs to build a platform that effectively reduced self-harm and suicide rates. By harnessing a platform that could analyze how people called in for assistance—assessing tone and how they described their situations—we helped the teams prioritize who needed immediate care versus who could wait a while for some support.

It’s when someone presents you with such a profound challenge that you really see the immense opportunity we have as an organization. These technology platforms do more than enable business; they help vulnerable people receive the care they need and, ultimately, save lives.

You mentioned that for Red Hat it’s relatively easy to work on new technologies because of the robust support provided by partners and customers alike. Can you elaborate on just how important those relationships are for your team?

Adrian: The point is that, while we are proud of the solutions we deliver through Red Hat, many integrated solutions require components from multiple software vendors. Our partners and integrators are essential because they bring together the various components needed to deliver, implement, and support these complex solutions. In many regions, especially where we serve multiple countries, these partners offer additional scale and reach, often accessing markets where Red Hat might not have a direct footprint. This collaboration is a critical part of why we work so closely with our partners.

Ed: Another significant benefit of having partners is that it allows Red Hat to concentrate on what we do best. We aren’t trying to solve every aspect of the IT enterprise supply chain. Instead, we work with best-of-breed partners who focus on their own areas of expertise. This means that Adrian’s teams and others in our region can focus on delivering core value to our customers. As we saw on stage, one of the Middle East’s largest banking group was very ahead of the curve in its approach to virtualisation and modernisation. These partners enable us to help customers execute at scale and with credibility. My background in operational IT tells me that although the journey is rarely smooth, having a trusted team and partners makes all the difference.

In today’s enterprise technology landscape, where hybrid and multi-cloud environments are the norm, how is Red Hat helping customers unlock the potential of open source technologies?
Ed: For me, the hybrid and multi-cloud narrative is essentially about providing customers with standardization. Some customers might say that they’re on a path toward data center consolidation, or are committed to a single hypervisor, or even a multi-cloud strategy. But once they embrace a hybrid approach, the underlying message is that they require a globally consistent management and operational platform—one that spans multiple cloud providers, private data centers, or even edge environments.

How do we achieve this consistency in an open source manner? When you’re a proprietary company, control is tight. With our strategy, we offer customers open choice—where to run their platform and which workloads to deploy on top of it. In essence, our approach empowers customers by eliminating the risks of siloed, locked-in solutions. This freedom enables businesses to continuously ask, “What should I run, and where and how should I run it?” They consider the portfolio of applications, evaluate whether low-latency edge deployment is needed—as is common for a supermarket loyalty system—or whether a core data center or public cloud deployment makes sense. The operational “how” is addressed by determining whether to run on a container platform, a virtual machine platform, or an alternative setup. Finally, the “why” ties back to ensuring the overall solution aligns with the customer’s cost and business objectives.

Ultimately, our focus is on answering one simple question for the customer: “What should I run, and where, how, and why should I run it?” This encapsulates our commitment to providing both choice and clarity in today’s complex IT environment.

Adrian: I find it quite interesting how that perspective plays out regionally. While we enable customers to run applications on our platforms, major players like Google are also part of the ecosystem. Particularly in Europe, where there is current uncertainty, many governments are questioning whether their sovereign data should reside on a cloud service originating from the U.S. Without diving too deeply into politics, this debate is prompting customers to consider alternative cloud options. For example, when running OpenShift on-premises or on a cloud provided by a specific country, it becomes easier to migrate to a new provider if necessary. This is an evolving discussion, especially in Europe, and it’s something that might expand beyond political cycles in the future.

Ed: Exactly. In Europe, the focus remains on providing choice. With open source technology, we sidestep many political concerns because of the transparency it offers. Customers can inspect the code to see that there are no hidden backdoors or data issues. Consequently, building a sovereign solution using Red Hat technology has gained significant traction. Both governments and organizations are increasingly interested in retaining full control over their data.

It seems that customers also desire a degree of freedom with their platforms; they want to ensure that no external party completely controls their systems. How does Red Hat provide this assurance of complete control?

Ed: Customers can deploy our platform in either of two ways. If they run it in their own data center, on-premises. In this case, they obtain full access—they have the code, the platform, all the necessary certificates, and they manage it themselves. In contrast, if they decide to run the platform on one of the hyperscalers, while the underlying compute infrastructure is provided by the hyperscaler, the platform—the layer where the data sits and the applications operate—remains in the open source domain. Therefore, even in these cases, customers retain the ability to influence, control, and understand what happens with their data and applications. And when it comes down to it, every country and organization will make its own decisions, but our consistent message remains: our focus is on choice. Whether a company decides to run its workloads privately, on the public cloud, or at the edge, we ensure that they have the consistent tools and platforms to do so efficiently.

Adrian: That’s exactly right. We have long maintained a commitment to enabling customers to choose the open hybrid cloud. Whether a customer opts for a sovereign cloud, a hyperscaler, or their own private cloud, our core mission is to grant them the freedom to choose and to operate in a simple, consistent, and controlled manner.

Where do you see the enterprise technology landscape heading in the next three to five years?
Ed: I believe that over the next three to five years, we will witness an increasingly consolidated effort to eliminate complexity within IT organizations. Over the last decade, IT has excelled in building silos—if anything, it’s been very effective at doing so. However, with the advent of AI, these separate silos of infrastructure and data are becoming even more problematic. When your data resides in multiple unconnected silos, it becomes extremely challenging to aggregate and leverage it for AI-based insights.

In a recent discussion with a financial services industry leader, the focus was increasingly on ensuring access to all their data, democratizing it internally, and enabling AI-driven querying. This represents a paradigm shift, as data today typically lives within isolated applications. In an AI-integrated world, breaking down these silos is critical. I foresee that one of the most significant developments in the near future—driven by AI—will be the democratization of data access across organizations.

Adrian: I concur. From a regional perspective, we might be a couple of years behind more developed markets like Europe or the U.S. For instance, we are still in the earlier stages of transitioning to the cloud. In the UAE and other regions, sovereign cloud providers are just beginning to expand their offerings. Financial institutions, aviation companies, and others are now starting to embrace the cloud more aggressively than they have in the past four or five years.

Ed: Another nuance here involves what we’re exploring with Granite and small language models. Often, to help Adrian’s customers manage support tickets, you don’t need a language model that knows Shakespeare by heart. Large language models typically contain vast amounts of data, much of which isn’t directly relevant to a given enterprise. Our focus has thus shifted to a choice: do we help organizations harness AI by asking questions of data they couldn’t access before, or do we tailor solutions with smaller language models designed to address specific enterprise challenges?
One notable example was how we applied a tailored small language model within Red Hat to support our own teams in resolving support tickets. This initiative not only saved millions of dollars but also significantly enhanced customer experience and sped up response times. Over time, while large language models have captured much of the buzz, I suspect we will see rapid adoption of small, specialized language models tailored for specific functions.

Tech Interviews

Riverbed Launches AI-Powered Intelligent Network Observability Solutions

Published

1 month ago

August 7, 2025

Integrator Web-Editor

By Riverbed Communications Team

Riverbed, a global leader in AIOps for observability, has launched its latest AI-driven network observability tools. These new solutions help IT teams proactively detect and resolve issues faster. As a result, organizations gain improved visibility, quicker remediation, and lower operational costs across hybrid environments.

Why Riverbed Network Observability Stands Out

Modern enterprise networks are becoming more complex. To meet this challenge, Riverbed’s latest tools provide real-time, AI-powered insights. The release includes the xx90 appliance series for AppResponse, NetProfiler, and Flow Gateway. These systems offer up to 3x more performance than previous models.

In addition, Riverbed now offers these tools through Flex Subscription. This flexible model supports deployments across physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. It also improves cost predictability and maximizes IT value.

Riverbed IQ Essentials: Remediation at Speed

As part of this launch, Riverbed is introducing the Intelligent Network Observability Essentials bundle — a curated set of tools designed to surface root causes faster and enable proactive remediation.

Included in the bundle:

–Riverbed IQ: A SaaS-based AI engine that pinpoints network issues without additional infrastructure.
–Role-Based Workspaces: Unified dashboards that deliver context-rich packet, flow, and endpoint visibility.
–Grafana Plug-In: Integration for users who want to visualize Riverbed metrics directly within existing Grafana dashboards.
–Topology Viewer: A dynamic visual map that correlates network topologies with application and user performance.

This bundle supports faster triage and deeper insight across distributed and hybrid networks, making it easier for IT teams to operate efficiently at scale.

Flexibility Meets Simplicity with Riverbed Flex

Today’s enterprises require technology investments that adapt to evolving business needs. Riverbed Flex delivers that flexibility with:

-License portability across hardware, virtual, and cloud deployments
-Predictable operating costs through OPEX-based pricing
-Future-ready architecture that eliminates the need to re-purchase software during transitions

By decoupling software from infrastructure, Flex allows businesses to realign observability investments with growth, resilience, and innovation goals — without compromising on value.

High-Performance Architecture, Built to Scale

To match the performance requirements of modern networks, Riverbed has engineered its new xx90 series appliances to support uncompromised throughput for both packet and flow-based observability. Whether deployed for AppResponse or NetProfiler, these appliances deliver high-volume capture and analysis — with sustained packet capture at over 50 Gbps and modular storage scaling beyond 2.4 PB.

New updates also include:

-Real-time triage of encrypted IPSec ESP traffic
-Support for cipher hygiene and globally distributed environments
-3x faster reporting and 2x greater flow throughput
-Dynamic flow load balancing and full support for SD-WAN environments

Together, these capabilities give organizations full-fidelity data visibility — essential for delivering seamless digital experiences.

Delivering Value and Efficiency at Every Layer

Dave Donatelli, CEO of Riverbed, highlighted the strategic vision behind this major release:

“With our next-gen xx90 systems and software advancements, we’re giving customers dramatically higher performance and unmatched efficiency. Riverbed IQ is powering smarter observability with AI insights, while Flex simplifies deployment and protects long-term investments.”

This sentiment reflects Riverbed’s ongoing commitment to reducing tool sprawl, simplifying network management, and empowering IT teams with AI-enhanced capabilities that drive efficiency at scale.

A Foundation for the Future of Observability

As digital demands continue to rise, Riverbed’s intelligent network observability solutions are positioned to help organizations adapt, scale, and thrive. By integrating hardware innovation with AIOps automation, and offering a modern licensing model, Riverbed delivers a platform that meets enterprise needs today — and evolves with them tomorrow.

Whether it’s accelerating incident response, maintaining user experience, or optimizing hybrid cloud performance, Riverbed’s latest release proves that observability isn’t just about monitoring — it’s about enabling smarter business decisions.

Make sure to check out the recent edition Digital Magazine Technology – The Integrator

Tech Interviews

Local by Design: The Untold Advantage Behind the Middle East’s Most Trusted Platforms

Published

2 months ago

August 5, 2025

Integrator Web-Editor

Arab tech executive presenting ride-hailing data in a Dubai office

By Khaled Nuseibeh, CEO of Hala

In today’s digital world, global platforms often dominate headlines. Yet in the Middle East, a different success story is unfolding—one led by home-grown innovation. Local platforms in the Middle East aren’t trying to catch up. They’re rewriting the playbook.

The Rise of Local Digital Platforms in the Middle East

Platforms rooted in their own communities see what others miss. They understand the silent signals of everyday life—the way people move, pray, celebrate, and adapt to seasons.

Taxi demand, for instance, spikes after Friday prayers, not just during morning rush. Families shift their travel patterns during Ramadan. During the scorching summer, shaded areas and malls become primary destinations. You won’t find these insights on a global dashboard—they come from living them.

Built-In Context: Why Localisation Wins

Being close to the ground gives local platforms a major edge. In a city like Dubai, it makes a difference whether you’re navigating Deira’s tight alleys or Downtown’s wide streets.

At Hala, we designed our model around this insight. Our “location snapping” project improved over 60,000 pickup and drop-off points—faster routing, fewer errors, and better experiences for both riders and captains.

Operational Excellence Through Cultural Intelligence

We don’t wait for problems to escalate. Our team spotted supply gaps caused by standardised captain shift times. So, we adjusted schedules to better match demand during peak periods—without compromising captain wellbeing.

Because we operate locally, we can act quickly. We don’t need to wait for head office approvals across time zones. We just fix what needs fixing.

Aligning with UAE Policies and National Vision

The value of localisation goes far beyond convenience. Increasingly, it aligns with national priorities. The UAE’s commitment to smart cities, sustainability, and economic diversification offers a clear framework for innovation—and regional players are best positioned to deliver on that.

For instance, just last month, Dubai launched a new initiative to award more government contracts to domestic manufacturers. The Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology also partnered with major retailers to boost visibility for locally produced goods.

These policies reflect a deeper truth: sustainable progress must be built from within. At Hala, founded as a public-private partnership between the RTA and Careem, this philosophy isn’t just a talking point—it’s how we operate.

Community-First Tech: A Blueprint for Scalable Growth

Trust is earned in the street—through consistency, reliability, and cultural relevance. That’s why both Hala and Careem Plus have kept support operations in-country, tailored our features to reflect the needs of UAE residents, and continually invested in tech that reflects local behaviours.

When localisation is built into your business model—not added as an afterthought—you can adapt faster, deliver more impact, and align seamlessly with both policy and community expectations.

Whether it’s refining geo-location accuracy, rethinking shift schedules, or rolling out financial services that matter to users here, local digital platforms in the Middle East are shaping a new era of tech leadership.

The Path Forward: Growth Built on Relevance

This region is young, mobile-first, and ambitious. People here aren’t just looking for functionality—they want platforms that reflect their identity, speak their language, and understand their context.

And increasingly, localisation isn’t a limitation on scale—it’s the blueprint for sustainable growth. The Middle East is not a monolith, and its cities are not interchangeable. Platforms that understand this will not only serve their markets better—they will lead them.

Read how Globant uses tech to drive sustainability in business

Tech Interviews

Why TWO99 is Rethinking Cloud Marketing with Compliance, Data, and Agility

Published

3 months ago

June 11, 2025

Integrator Web-Editor

How does TWO 99 ensure its Cloud Security Solution remain compliant with evolving international data privacy laws like GDPR and HIPAA?

Two99’s cloud-native security solutions—including CNAPP, CWPP, and CSPM—are engineered to align with evolving international data privacy regulations such as GDPR and HIPAA through a proactive, multi-layered compliance framework. Our platforms integrate automated policy enforcement and real-time security posture monitoring to enable rapid detection and remediation of compliance deviations.

As an ISO 27001:2022 certified organization, we maintain a robust Information Security Management System (ISMS) that embeds data protection, risk assessments, and regular audits into our core operations. In parallel, our ISO 9001:2015 certification underscores our commitment to rigorous quality management processes, allowing agile adaptation to global regulatory shifts.

Our compliance team continuously monitors international privacy standards, translating insights into operational controls and product enhancements. We enforce stringent data storage protocols, including encryption of data at rest and in transit using advanced cryptographic methods, along with secure key management and policy-driven data retention and deletion.

Regular internal evaluations and third-party audits further validate our security posture, ensuring that Two99’s offerings not only meet but consistently exceed global data protection standards.

Given your background with WPP and GroupM, how has your approach to digital transformation changed since founding TWO 99?

My experience with WPP and GroupM provided invaluable insights into how large-scale organizations operate—especially in terms of process, structure, and scalability. However, founding TWO99 marked a deliberate shift toward a more agile, innovation-driven approach to digital transformation. At TWO99, we focus on vertical-agnostic scalability, bringing together technology, creativity, and performance under a unified, adaptable framework.

Unlike traditional holding companies that often operate within rigid silos, our model emphasizes speed, flexibility, and integration. We’ve built an ecosystem that allows us to pivot quickly, test rapidly, and deploy solutions that are customized to the dynamic needs of each client. This is especially critical in emerging markets like India, where consumer behaviors and platform trends evolve at breakneck speed.

Our approach moves away from isolated service offerings and instead delivers end-to-end growth strategies—from brand storytelling to performance marketing—under one roof. This integrated engine not only accelerates ROI but also empowers clients to scale more efficiently across diverse industries and geographies.

Ultimately, digital transformation at TWO99 is not about adopting new tools; it’s about building a mindset of experimentation, collaboration, and continual evolution—something that’s only possible when tech, creative, and media are not just coexisting, but co-creating.

You speak a lot about growth marketing—what’s one underused strategy or tool you believe more startups should adopt?

One of the most underutilized yet high-impact strategies in growth marketing today is predictive audience modeling—specifically using first-party data to anticipate user behavior before a customer even shows active intent. In the rush to acquire users, many startups focus heavily on performance spend and surface-level targeting, often missing the opportunity to build smarter, more efficient pipelines through data-driven foresight.

By leveraging tools like AI-powered lookalike modeling or Google’s AutoML, companies can identify emerging patterns and preemptively segment high-intent audiences. These platforms analyze behavioral signals—ranging from product interactions and website heatmaps to backend signals like GitHub commits or CRM workflows—to spot trends that traditional analytics would miss.

At TWO99, we’ve seen transformative results with this approach. For instance, by layering multiple intent signals (e.g., developer activity, trial-to-paid movement, sales pipeline stages) and combining them with Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO), we helped a SaaS client reduce their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by over 30%. This wasn’t just about targeting more people—it was about targeting the right people, at the right time, with the right message.

Startups that embrace predictive modeling early in their growth journey can shift from reactive marketing to proactive growth engineering, ultimately driving better ROI, faster time to conversion, and more sustainable customer relationships.

At TWO 99, how do you balance creative innovation with data-driven performance when leading campaigns for tech and cloud-based clients?

At TWO99, we treat data as the creative brief—a philosophy that helps us seamlessly bridge creative storytelling with performance marketing, especially for tech and cloud-based clients. Rather than starting with assumptions or generic messaging, we begin with behavioral analytics and first-party data to uncover real pain points, usage patterns, and moments of friction within the user journey.

This insight-driven approach allows us to craft narratives that aren’t just imaginative, but deeply relevant and conversion-focused. For example, if product analytics show a drop-off at the integration stage, our creative strategy might revolve around simplifying technical complexity or highlighting seamless onboarding. In this way, the campaign’s message is directly informed by what users are experiencing, not just what the brand wants to say.

We also continuously A/B test creative iterations—from copy to visual formats—to fine-tune performance in real time. For tech and cloud clients, where the buyer journey is often complex and multi-touch, this balance of data and creativity ensures that each piece of content not only captures attention but drives measurable outcomes like engagement, sign-ups, or qualified leads.

In short, we don’t see data and creativity as separate tracks. At TWO99, one fuels the other—creating high-performance campaigns that are not only intelligent but emotionally resonant.