Driving IT modernization with OpenShift Virtualization

The world of virtualization software and platforms has shifted, and organizations are left at a crossroads. Rising costs, changing licensing models and uncertainty about long-term support costs have IT leaders reassessing their virtualization strategies. But this moment of disruption has a silver lining—not only do organizations have an opportunity to migrate their virtual machine (VM) workloads, they also have an opportunity to modernize and future-proof their application infrastructure. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization provides a unified, scalable platform for migrating VMs while also enabling modernization and consistent management across hybrid cloud environments. 

These unexpected shifts have given organizations the opportunity to rethink how their workloads are managed, scaled, secured and aligned to their business needs. Modernization is more than just change—it's about unifying VM and container-based workloads to eliminate silos, automate operations with built in tooling for speed and consistency, optimize costs and flexibility across hybrid cloud environments and prepare for the future of AI. 

Cloud-native administration and app development

OpenShift Virtualization allows VM workloads to take advantage of cloud-native capabilities and administration. Teams working across on-premise, public cloud and edge locations can now use a consistent set of tools and features for both containerized and VM-based applications, increasing operational efficiency. 

OpenShift Virtualization is an operator included with OpenShift where Kubernetes provides a unified orchestration and management layer combined with the KubeVirt open source project, which allows VMs to be managed as pods alongside containers. This means IT teams can use cloud-native tools such as Prometheus for monitoring, Istio for service mesh, Knative for serverless workloads, Tekton for CI/CD pipelines and ArgoCD for GitOps-based continuous delivery. Developers also benefit, because they can apply modern practices like observability, automated pipelines and declarative app management whether they are building new containerized microservices or working with existing VM-based workloads.

In this demo you can see how cloud native tooling works with OpenShift Virtualization. 

Scalability to the cloud

OpenShift Virtualization allows you to move your virtualization environment to the cloud. This gives you the adaptability to scale workloads dynamically, optimize resource usage and reduce infrastructure management overhead. This not only supports legacy application lifecycles but also enables integration with cloud-native services for improved agility, scalability and innovation. 

OpenShift Virtualization is available across our OpenShift cloud services offerings and is continuing to expand support. With both managed and self-managed deployment options, availability across the public clouds gives you greater flexibility to deploy in the environment that best suits your needs. 

Learn more about our OpenShift cloud services offerings for OpenShift Virtualization. 

AI integration

As organizations accelerate their adoption of AI and cloud-native architectures, the ability to integrate existing VM-based infrastructure with emerging technologies becomes essential. OpenShift Virtualization provides that bridge, offering a modern, unified platform where traditional applications and next-generation workloads can coexist and evolve together. 

This flexibility is especially powerful when it comes to AI. OpenShift enables organizations to build, train and deploy AI models in the same environment where their core business applications and data already reside. Rather than requiring a disruptive migration or costly refactoring, teams can modernize at their own pace, leveraging existing investments while incrementally adopting containerized and AI-driven services. OpenShift can also be used to host modern AI workloads. This added flexibility allows organizations to bring existing data and applications into the same environment as new AI tools and frameworks without requiring a complete rewrite or migration. 

By combining virtualization with AI-ready infrastructure, OpenShift  transforms the role of VMs from static assets to flexible building blocks for innovation, positioning organizations to lead in a future where adaptability and efficiency are essential. 

A single platform for migration and long-term modernization

OpenShift Virtualization empowers you to turn infrastructure disruption into a catalyst for modernization. By bridging your VMs and containers within a consistent, scalable platform, you can streamline management, reduce costs and accelerate your adoption of cloud and AI. Whether you're focused on immediate migration needs or preparing for future innovation, OpenShift Virtualization gives you the flexibility and stability to evolve on your terms. 

Learn more about OpenShift Virtualization at Red Hat Summit.