By\u00a0Art Jahnke.\u00a0This story originally appeared in\u00a0<\/em>BU Today<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/em>Red Hat, the world\u2019s leading provider of open source enterprise software, is joining in a five-year-long partnership with Boston University, an arrangement aimed at advancing research into emerging and translational technologies, such as cloud computing and big data platforms. The collaboration, celebrated Monday evening at a dinner at the home of Robert A. Brown, BU president, will involve researchers from both Red Hat<\/a> and BU, and will provide opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to drive new ideas and new technologies.<\/p>\n Electrical and Computer Engineering\u00a0Professor\u00a0Orran Krieger<\/a>, director of BU\u2019s Cloud Computing Initiative<\/a> and the University\u2019s lead on the partnership, says Red Hat appreciated the potential of such a research collaboration after working with BU to develop software on the Massachusetts Open Cloud<\/a> (MOC),\u00a0at the\u00a0Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center<\/a> in Holyoke, Mass<\/a>.<\/p>\n Krieger, an\u00a0ECE\u00a0professor of the practice and a Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science &\u00a0Engineering<\/a> resident fellow, says project plans include support for two research labs, one at Red Hat\u2019s new corporate space in Boston\u2019s Seaport district and one on the Charles River Campus. The collaboration, to be managed by an oversight committee made up of key technical personnel at BU and Red Hat, calls for the creation of a Red Hat Incubator that will pursue exploratory research and development based on proposals solicited from across the BU and Red Hat communities. It will provide fellowships to selected PhD students in the College of Arts & Sciences computer science and College of Engineering electrical and computer engineering departments, as well as support for full-time and part-time postdocs and visiting scientists, among them those from universities involved in MOC projects.<\/p>\n Hariri Institute director Azer Bestavros<\/a>, a CAS computer science professor and ENG systems engineering professor, and a key architect of the Red Hat partnership, says such cooperative arrangements between industry and academia are increasingly common as corporations come to appreciate the benefits of access to the wide range of research conducted at universities.<\/p>\n \u201cThis provides opportunities for Red Hat employees to be part of various kinds of research,\u201d Bestavros says. \u201cThey have access to talent, and they can connect with faculty and students. It gives them the ability to find new uses for their platform. For example, if there is neurology research, they could use it as test bed for Red Hat software.\u201d<\/p>\n He says that Red Hat chose to partner with BU based on its prior collaboration with the University. \u201cThey know that we are not starting out cold,\u201d he says. \u201cRed Hat is very interested in novel platforms that combine different technologies into a single offering. This is a way for them to get a foot in the door of a great University with very fitting research.\u201d<\/p>\n Jan Mark Holzer, a Red Hat senior consulting engineer in emerging technologies, says the company sees two main drivers of the partnership. \u201cOne is the ability to tap into an amazing talent pool at Boston University as potential hires as engineers and technology leaders,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd the other is we also look forward to\u00a0tapping into the talent pool as part of our research agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n Holzer says the collaboration could help academia embrace open source as a model of innovation. \u201cThe combination of Red Hat, the leader in delivering enterprise consumable open source solutions, and Boston University, with its world-renowned\u00a0research capabilities,\u201d he says, \u201cwill enable research in academia to become even\u00a0more applicable to the broader\u00a0industry.<\/p>\n \u201cWe already have an excellent relationship with Boston University through the Mass Open Cloud and that has worked really well. There is a lot of alignment already.\u201d<\/p>\n He says possible projects include research into better use of cloud technologies, orchestration and deployment of large-scale computer infrastructure, machine learning and automation, and containerization and microservices architectures.<\/p>\n