Virtualization at full speed ahead of Red Hat Summit 2026

If you're starting to rethink how you run virtualization workloads at your organization, you're not alone. Rising licensing costs, the pressure to apply AI, and a need to integrate services are inspiring organizations to look at new virtualization options.

Here are five different organizations across a variety of industries including telecommunications, defense, and education, that are using Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to turn disruption into a strategic advantage.

To hear more stories like this, check out the OpenShift Virtualization sessions taking place at Red Hat Summit 2026 in a few weeks!

Telefónica Brazil cuts infrastructure scaling time by 99%

Serving 116 million customers requires a core IT environment that's fast, resilient, and cost-efficient. By migrating to OpenShift and running virtual machines (VM) alongside cloud-native apps on a single, integrated platform, Telefónica Brazil eliminated the silos that were slowing them down:

• 99% faster scaling. What previously took 24 hours now takes ten minutes.
• 55% reduction in CPU consumption and 65% reduction in memory usage.
• 91% reduction in patch update times: From four hours to just twenty minutes.

Beyond the operational wins, Telefónica Brazil has also built a foundation ready for AI workloads, removing the constraints of legacy infrastructure within its IT stack.

Modernizing our core infrastructure to an open hybrid cloud with Red Hat's common cloud-native platform allows us to be more responsive to customer needs, reduces our environmental footprint through better resource utilization, and provides the flexibility that we need to lead in the development of next-generation AI and cloud-native workloads.

— Guilherme Marinasco, Senior Management and Platform & Product Engineering, Telefónica Brazil (Vivo)

Read the full article: Telefónica Brazil Modernizes IT Cloud Infrastructure with Red Hat OpenShift to Massively Boost Operational Efficiency.

Vodafone Oman targets 100% cloud-native by 2028

As a digital-first service provider in a competitive market, Vodafone Oman needed an infrastructure that could keep pace without spiked operational costs.

They chose to standardize on Red Hat OpenShift and use Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to bridge the gap between legacy VMs and their cloud-native future. Today, more than 60% of Vodafone Oman's production environment runs on Red Hat OpenShift, with a clear roadmap to transition the majority of workloads to this cloud-native foundation by 2028.

By standardizing on Red Hat platforms, we have created a common foundation across our IT environment that helps reduce costs, improve agility and accelerate the delivery of innovative digital services for our customers.

— Pramod Chinchunsure, Head of Technology Operations, Vodafone Oman

Read the full article: Vodafone Oman Continues Techco Transformation with Red Hat.

UK Ministry of Defence builds a unified digital backbone

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) needed a common, trusted platform to deliver digital services faster, harden its security posture, and unlock AI at scale.

Through a new enterprise agreement, MOD standardized on a common foundation with Red Hat platforms. As part of the agreement, MOD adopted Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to break down silos and manage containers and VMs on a unified application platform.

Key expected outcomes of the standardized approach:

• A clear path from VMs to containers, with the ability to manage both side-by-side using Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization for flexibility and potential cost savings.
• Enterprise-wide automation to reduce manual tasks, increase compliance, and drive repeatability at scale.
• AI at scale with a common platform that enables data scientists and developers to collaborate using any AI model on any accelerator, on any cloud.
• A consistent security footprint across a highly distributed, mission-critical environment

Red Hat is helping Defence Digital Foundry build our unified, modern digital backbone to keep the UK Ministry of Defence agile and innovative."

— Mivy James, Chief Technology Officer, UK Ministry of Defence

Read the full article: UK Ministry of Defence Collaborates with Red Hat to Improve Digital Delivery, Unlock AI Capabilities and Scale its Hybrid Cloud.

Las Cruces Public Schools: The first private cloud in a New Mexico school district

Las Cruces Public Schools (LCPS) is the second-largest school district in New Mexico, and manages IT infrastructure for roughly 23,000 students and 4,000 staff across more than 40 locations. When their virtualization vendor announced steep price increases ahead of contract renewal, the district's small IT team made a bold call to migrate to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization instead.

Using Red Hat Learning Subscriptions to upskill in-house, the team migrated approximately 180–200 VMs and stood up what they believe is the first private cloud environment in a public school district in New Mexico. Their student information system (which handles grading, attendance, and resource planning) and payroll infrastructure now run on the new platform.

• VM deployment time dropped from 30-45 minutes to 5 minutes.
• Warm migration kept VMs running during data transfer, minimizing downtime and stress on the team.
• Infrastructure as Code via GitOps is on the 2026 roadmap, alongside Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management for Kubernetes and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security for Kubernetes.

The biggest differentiator that we see is that we are reclaiming our time… Instead of focusing on scraping together resources, we have a unified tool.

— Marco Torres-Sanchez, Systems Administrator Lead, Las Cruces Public Schools

Read the full article: Las Cruces Public Schools Virtualization.

Advent One: Building a blueprint for modernization—from the inside out

Advent One, an Australian hybrid cloud solutions and managed services provider, follows a straightforward philosophy: Adopt new technologies internally first, then deliver proven blueprints to clients. When rising virtualization costs and increasing customer demand for modernization converged, Advent One turned to Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization to consolidate containers and VMs onto a single platform.

The results were significant:

• Saved a week's worth of effort every 30 days using Event-Driven Ansible for automated remediation.
• Reduced VM count by up to 50% through containerization, dropping below 100 VMs.
• Patching time cut from 2 hours to 20 minutes, with more jobs running in parallel using containerized automation.
• Recovery time objectives dropped from 1 hour to 5 minutes through integrated backup and disaster recovery.

Today, approximately 90% of Advent One's workloads run on Red Hat OpenShift. That's roughly half containerized, the rest managed with OpenShift Virtualization. They were also the first Red Hat Partner in Asia Pacific to join the Specialized Partner Program, and took home Partner of the Year in the Red Hat Ecosystem Awards 2025 for Australia and New Zealand.

Red Hat OpenShift gives us the tools we need in one platform, with the ability to manage containers, virtualization, GitOps workflows, and automation.

— Talor Holloway, CTO, Advent One

Read the full article: Advent One modernizes IT with Red Hat.

What's next

From global telcos to school districts, organizations are turning to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization for flexibility to manage VMs and containers together on a single, hybrid application platform while building toward an AI future.

Want to hear more from the organizations building with Red Hat? Save your seat at Red Hat Summit 2026 to see who else is sharing their virtualization journey on the main stage.