OpenStack may no longer garner the revolutionary telecommunications limelight it once held, but that hasn’t stopped Red Hat from continuing to update its managed version of the platform, and Red Hat executive Ian Hood said the vendor will remain committed to OpenStack until “I turn off the last LTE [virtualized network function] that’s running on it.”

Hood’s commitment comes on the heels of Red Hat rolling out a nominal 17.1 update to its managed OpenStack platform. Those updates are focused on new management and operation tools that allow OpenStack users to better manage their infrastructure at the edge and ease management of 4G LTE and 5G networks.

Hood, who is chief technologist for Red Hat’s Global Service Providers business, explained that this management change is tied to the vendor’s Kubernetes-focused OpenShift work.

“We're actually going to make it so that the control plane of OpenStack can actually become something we actually manage from Kubernetes, almost like it's the same thing to have that upgrade ability, spin it up a lot faster,” Hood explained. “Your worker nodes are still [virtual machines] under OpenStack … but now your control plane is a lot more integrated and allows us to bring it to life faster.”

Hood noted that this is being done to satiate many operators that are basically running two virtualized environments: one based on VMs running in OpenStack to control legacy 4G LTE network functions and one based on containers and Kubernetes running in OpenShift to support 5G deployments.

“What most people have done, the bigger ones have put OpenShift beside OpenStack and put the cloud-native stuff on OpenShift and left the LTE [IP multimedia subsystem] stuff where it lives and then [it] becomes now an operational thing because I've got this scale and people are still scaling out,” Hood said of this dual operating model.

But, by running OpenStack on top of OpenShift, which the latest update supports, Hood said his team has shown the ability to bring OpenStack “to life as a new control plane within about six or seven minutes, which normally in 40 minutes you wouldn’t have gotten it done.”

Red Hat’s efforts may seem complex, but they are based on what its operator customers are asking for.

“Operators don't turn stuff off, they run it as long as they can unless they have a more efficient way to do it that is economically feasible to move this stuff over,’ Hood said. “You've got to be very pragmatic about what that cost looks like to migrate stuff over. … So until that happens in most of the world, OpenStack isn't going anywhere.”

OpenStack might not be going anywhere in the near term, but OpenShift remains the future for Red Hat and parent company IBM.

Red Hat has been continually tightening the integration between its OpenStack and OpenShift products. The more robust OpenStack 17 update unveiled last September included the ability to run both virtual network functions (VNFs) and cloud-native network functions (CNFs) side-by-side in the network.

This integration also feeds into market demand.

OpenShift was repeatedly cited by IBM management during its most recent earnings call as a key opportunity driver for the company. This included a 40% surge in OpenShift revenue growth during the quarter and the platform generated $1 billion in annual recurring revenue.

OpenStack was not mentioned during the call.

The latest OpenStack update does boost Red Hat’s ability to compete for operator business.

ABI Research last year grouped Red Hat and VMware as the top 5G telco cloud-native platform providers. Both vendors are focused on providing operators with a horizontal control plane from which they can manage network and support operations regardless of their underlying cloud choices.

“Their goals in telco are similar, and they are both positioning themselves to be multivendor, cloud native and multicloud with the capability to service the core, edge, and [radio access network],” ABI Research analyst Kangrui Ling said.

Hood said this focus frees Red Hat up to optimize this control layer to work in different environments and allow operators to use that same interface for easier management. Red Hat’s optimization efforts include work with the major hyperscalers and RAN equipment providers.

Red Hat could also squeeze out market share from VMware, which has been operating under the shadow of a potential acquisition from Broadcom for more than a year. Broadcom management has repeatedly said it plans to continue supporting all of VMware’ ongoing efforts, but some are unconvinced.

“I would say that the situation in the marketplace has maybe made people think about what platforms they have and who can actually help them,” Hood said of the current environment.