From the now to the next: How Red Hat’s trusted platforms bridge modern and next-generation IT needs

At this week’s Red Hat Summit, we’ve seen no shortage of disruption. From the solutions to make the inference phase of AI more scalable and cost-effective to embedded generative AI (gen AI) across Red Hat’s platforms, change is everywhere. IT decision-makers feel the pressure to adapt and innovate based on these advancements, but, as Matt Hicks has said, they’re also forced to exist in two very different realities:

• The now, where every decision, every investment must clearly show return on investment (ROI) and answer critical production demands, and;
• The next, the future yet-to-come, fueled by possibilities that change on an almost weekly basis and can define or damage an organization’s technological future.

This where Red Hat excels - we help you readily answer the demands of the now, but also be ready for and embrace the innovation of the next. You need scalability, stability, quality, reliability - all the “iliities.” You need all of this, with performance in mind - and not at the expense of the future. 

Trust is forged in the fires of production IT

The demand to pair innovation with production-readiness isn’t new to Red Hat; it’s at the core of our business. For nearly three decades, Red Hat has helped our customers and partners harness the power of open source innovation for mission-critical systems. It started with Linux, evolved to encompass hybrid cloud, Kubernetes and virtualization, and now AI is the next frontier facing IT leaders. 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 10 is just one example of this commitment - this is still the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform that fuels 90% of the Fortune 500, but it’s not stagnant. We’ve made significant enhancements that focus on making every Linux SysAdmin's life better. From image mode, which gets the problem of drift under control and makes systems as easy to update as smartphones, to leading the charge in post-quantum security with the first commercial operating system to ship the NIST-approved post-quantum cryptographic algorithms. At its core, it’s still the RHEL you’ve known and trusted. 

For Red Hat, trust is built on durable, consistent platforms, which Red Hat already powers across the hybrid cloud. This is also our strategy for gen AI deployments - bringing this same level of trust and reliability to the new demands of enterprise AI, letting organizations experiment and innovate while limiting potential risk. We’ve been here before, we’ve done it before and we’ll do it again. And we’ll stay true to our open source values.

Complexity is the innovation-ender

The customers that I talk to aren’t scared of AI - they want to embrace the benefits and possibilities large language models (LLMs) and gen AI can bring to their organization. What DOES scare them is the complexity that AI platforms bring: How do I keep up with it? How do I scale it? What new security challenges do I need to address?

To put it bluntly, complexity is the killer for IT innovation. If trust forms the bricks, then simplicity is then the mortar in bridging the gap between rapid innovation and essential stability. I’ve already discussed how RHEL 10 does this, with gen AI and enhanced deployment capabilities on the same stable platform our customers expect. But we’re bringing greater simplification to other critical areas of enterprise IT as well - Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed, enhancements to Red Hat AI, cloud-optimized RHEL images and more - to make it even easier to align current demands with future growth without nested complexity.

Into the next era/evolution/enterprise/beyond

The next is only imposing until it’s now. Gen AI workloads and AI infused applications will, ultimately, be commonplace in organizations across all industries, just like virtualization, containers and Kubernetes are today. The same level of trust and reliability that we ascribe to these platforms need to extend to AI deployments, which is why Red Hat has made this a key part of our strategy. Red Hat AI Inference Server brings the expected level of trust from a Red Hat platform to leading open source AI inference technologies. We’re also extending our open source leadership to address the new world of distributed inference at scale with llm-d, backed by a myriad of ecosystem partners and AI leaders.

At Summit this year, we’ve told a number of customer stories about how we’re helping move their businesses from the now to the next. From Aramco and CAE to CalHEERS and the City of Vienna, global organizations across industries turn to Red Hat to help them drive towards a more innovative future without negatively impacting their operations today.

In the end, there’s one thing that IT decision makers have in common when they need to make the leap from today to the future: They need openness in the technology and trust in their partners to put them in a position to succeed. And this is exactly what Red Hat has done in our past, is doing today and will continue to do in our future. Open won in operating systems. And open will win in AI too.