Why should your organization standardize on Red Hat Enterprise Linux today?

I am currently collaborating with my product marketing team on content explaining why organizations—whether they currently use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or not—should standardize on RHEL today. The content is fresh in my mind, and I wanted to share some of it with you in advance, as I believe it contains compelling insights.

As you likely know, we launched numerous new features and capabilities this year with RHEL 10, including image mode for RHEL, which enables users to create and manage operating system images for consistent deployment, and the RHEL command-line assistant powered by Lightspeed, which uses generative AI to help users execute complex command-line tasks. We also announced the inclusion of post-quantum encryption algorithms to help your organization resist future security attacks. More recently, with the launch of RHEL 10.1 and 9.7, we included support for AI accelerators via our repositories, and also introduced a RHEL offline command-line assistant in dev preview, along with RHEL HPC for Azure. Furthermore, just a few weeks ago, we announced the Red Hat Project Hummingbird.

These innovative features, capabilities, and key announcements—spanning consistency, AI integration, advanced security, and high-performance computing—reinforce RHEL's position as the leading enterprise Linux platform. They are a compelling reason to standardize your infrastructure on RHEL, ensuring you are equipped with a consistent, secure, and modern operating system foundation ready for the future of IT.

We have many more exciting developments planned for 2026, so stay tuned and make sure you check out the links above in case you missed any of these significant announcements.

In this blog, I want to discuss how standardizing on RHEL across your entire infrastructure will help solve many critical organizational challenges and the specific business outcomes it will deliver.

What does it mean to standardize on RHEL?

Standardizing on RHEL refers to adopting a uniform approach to using RHEL across your organization. It involves selecting RHEL and implementing it consistently across all systems. The goal is to streamline management and support processes, simplify software development and deployment, increase operational efficiency, increase agility, and deliver applications more quickly.

Let's look at how RHEL standardization can simplify infrastructure complexity, solve your challenges, and produce specific outcomes and business value.

Simplifying infrastructure complexity with RHEL standardization

Today's infrastructure often resembles a sprawling, inconsistent mess. This workload sprawl is a constant source of headaches, creating security blind spots as vulnerabilities are missed, slowing down application delivery due to constant platform troubleshooting, and draining valuable IT resources in low-value tasks like managing endless platform variations. The lack of uniformity inherently reduces agility, leaving your organization slow to adapt and continually fighting fires in an environment that is too complex to efficiently secure or innovate within.

Now imagine a reality where RHEL standardization sweeps away complexity, and creates a unified reliable platform that simplifies automation and provides instant agility. This instant agility allows teams to rapidly address issues and focus on high-value innovation. Paired with RHEL's built-in enterprise-grade security and a certified ecosystem, this consistency transforms your security posture, allowing your organization to securely build, run, and scale any workload with confidence and speed.

How RHEL standardization solves your challenges

Standardizing on RHEL increases agility by providing a consistent, standardized operating environment. This standardization essentially reduces complexity and maintenance overhead, which makes it significantly easier to rapidly address critical issues such as security vulnerabilities and performance bottlenecks across your entire infrastructure. Image mode for RHEL further supports this standardization by allowing users to manage RHEL as immutable, deployable images via containers, which ensures an identical and repeatable OS foundation across all deployments.

Furthermore, adopting RHEL empowers your team and accelerates innovation. Your staff gains access to a trusted, stable, and extensively tested open source platform, with tools like the RHEL command-line assistant, powered by Red Hat Lightspeed, which offers AI-driven guidance to help users of all skill levels execute complex tasks quickly and efficiently. This strategic move frees up limited internal staff from complex, low-level maintenance tasks, allowing them to focus on high-value innovation and achieving a faster speed to market. Your organization benefits from a solid ecosystem and comprehensive resources that mitigate the dependency on deep, internal Linux expertise.

RHEL also simplifies and automates your IT environment by providing a unified, reliable platform. This consistency makes it much easier and more cost-effective to automate existing processes and application deployments, even within heterogeneous environments.

Finally, RHEL allows you to securely build, run, and scale with confidence. Built on a foundation of enterprise-grade security and stability, it provides a trustworthy open source platform. RHEL offers built-in security capabilities, such as post-quantum cryptography (a set of algorithms designed to protect information from future quantum computer attacks), and a certified ecosystem designed to meet the security requirements for your hybrid cloud infrastructure, so your workloads are protected from development through to deployment.

Outcomes and business value of standardizing on RHEL

The business value of standardizing on RHEL is tangible. Your organization will see increased business agility by deploying current and future workloads with speed, consistency, and portability across all environments. We also help address skills gaps through tailored training and consulting services, as well as deployment and management solutions that make Linux more user-friendly and accessible. This approach results in gained operational efficiency, as a consistent platform and tools reduce administration time, freeing up valuable resources to focus on innovation. Ultimately, you can establish an enhanced security posture with a trustworthy platform at the foundation, significantly strengthening your overall security posture.

For a review of the significant ROI and cost savings realized by organizations that standardize on RHEL, take a look at the business value of standardizing on RHEL.