Red Hat partners with AWS to enhance AI & cloud offerings

Red Hat has announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), aimed at expanding the availability of Red Hat products in AWS Marketplace to support business efforts in virtualisation and AI.

The collaboration focuses on enhancing offerings such as Red Hat OpenShift AI, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI for deployment on AWS infrastructure. The goal is to facilitate better management of virtual machines (VMs), containerised workloads, and scalable AI solutions.

Both companies, which have long been partners, aim to empower businesses with robust hybrid cloud platforms to support application modernisation, VM migration, and AI deployments. In doing so, they assist organisations facing virtual infrastructure management uncertainties and escalating costs.

Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS is set to receive increased support as part of this initiative. This fully managed application platform aids customers in integrating OpenShift Virtualization within AWS environments, thus streamlining VM migrations and application modernisation efforts. The service will support Windows virtualised workloads, providing flexibility in deploying workloads through AWS EC2 bare metal instances.

The inclusion of OpenShift Virtualization, along with tools for migration, simplifies VM migrations and integrates automation from initial deployment, featuring auto-healing capabilities. Running OpenShift Virtualization on AWS EC2 bare metal instances allows for improved performance by enabling direct interaction between VMs, containers, hardware, and infrastructure.

Red Hat's collaboration will also focus on leveraging Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform to expedite large-scale migrations. This platform enhances automation tasks and simplifies the migration processes in AWS environments.

In terms of AI, the partnership aims to expand the accessibility of AI-related products like RHEL AI and Red Hat OpenShift AI on AWS Marketplace, supporting NVIDIA and other AI accelerator offerings. This expansion will aid organisations in accessing scalable AI capabilities using either self-managed options or built-in services.

The effort is further supported by a roadmap designed by both corporations to deliver these technologies effectively to their client base, enhancing cloud-based business needs comprehension.

Stefanie Chiras, Senior Vice President, Partner Ecosystem Success at Red Hat, stated, "The collaboration between Red Hat and AWS continues to be built on enabling customer choice, starting with where they can run their workloads across the hybrid cloud. Now, we're extending this choice and flexibility to not just 'where' an organisation runs their applications, but also 'how,' from containers to virtual machines, all using the same platform. And, as AI becomes the next critical enterprise IT decision, we're making optionality a reality in accelerated compute infrastructure, enabling customers to select the hardware accelerators that make the most sense for their unique hybrid cloud AI strategies and workloads."

Chris Grusz, Managing Director of Technology Partnerships at AWS, commented, "AWS and Red Hat share a common vision: empowering organisations to make strategic decisions today that will fuel innovation tomorrow. Our collaboration is focused on supporting customers throughout their cloud journeys, addressing both immediate infrastructure needs and future-facing technologies like AI. By combining Red Hat's open source solutions with AWS's unparalleled scale and support, we're creating a powerful combination that streamlines application modernisation, facilitates seamless cloud migrations, and accelerates AI adoption. This synergy enables organisations to navigate the complexities of digital transformation more efficiently, ensuring they remain agile and competitive in an increasingly technology-driven landscape."

Kannan Rasappan, Chief Executive Officer at Banfico, stated, "Open banking requires a reliable and flexible platform to effectively build, deploy and manage critical applications in compliance with industry regulations. With Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, Banfico is able to significantly accelerate application delivery to build services at the pace of demand without compromising on security or performance. We look forward to our continued collaboration with Red Hat and AWS to further build upon our modern container strategy in a flexible public cloud, meeting the needs of the banking industry today and into the future."

Gary Chen, Research Director of Software Defined Compute at IDC, remarked, "Enterprises must begin to think beyond just managing clusters of virtual machines. CIOs and IT leaders must consider how to optimise their virtualised infrastructure as an engine for modernisation that supports their artificial intelligence roadmaps, modern applications, and prepare for the next generation of IT. Organisations are looking for a strategic bridge between traditional VMs and modern, cloud-native applications, paving the way for future innovation while maintaining operational continuity."