Red Hat Summit: Hybrid cloud architecture meets AI innovation – News

Generative AI may dominate headlines, but for enterprise tech leaders, the real conversation is about the hybrid cloud architecture that supports it.

Red Hat Inc. has become one of the most critical players helping developers and IT teams manage that complexity, from the operating system to platform-level automation and AI. At last year’s Summit, Red Hat made clear that automation would be key to the future of hybrid cloud architecture. That message resonates even more in 2025, as the company continues its push to streamline how enterprises build, secure and run applications across hybrid and multicloud infrastructure.

With new momentum around AI inference, virtualization and next-gen Linux, the stage is set for the upcoming Red Hat Summit to be rich in platform strategy and technical substance, according to Rob Strechay, managing director of theCUBE Research.

“As AI has gripped the world and technology leaders by storm, with constant change, and for organizations looking for reliable platforms in a hybrid world, open source is there to provide many solutions to those challenges,” he said.

Red Hat Summit will bring together technical leaders, developers and industry trailblazers to explore the latest advancements in open-source automation, hybrid infrastructure and AI-powered platforms. Join theCUBE, News Media’s livestreaming studio, from May 19-21 for exclusive interviews and real-time insights from Red Hat executives, engineers and ecosystem partners — all through the lens of real-world innovation and open-source leadership. (* Disclosure below.)

Check out what’s in store for theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit:

Red Hat advances AI through hybrid cloud architecture

AI inference is poised to take the spotlight at Red Hat Summit, where leaders will outline how open-source tools can help enterprises run models more efficiently. Red Hat is backing this focus with real investment, including acquiring Neuralmagic Inc. and supporting the open-source vLLM project. These actions aim to build scalable inference platforms that are as cost-conscious as they are performant, according to Ashesh Badani, chief product officer of Red Hat.

“We acquired … Neural Magic to help us strive forward … and we believe [vLLM] will form the foundation of the efficiency that we want to bring across our large customer base,” Badani said during theCUBE’s Red Hat Summit preview video. “We expect … Red Hat Summit to be talking about the work that Neural Magic has done [and] the work that we are now collectively doing along with them in the community — and many of the participants to bring vLLM to a much wider audience than historically we have.”

Red Hat is also extending its infrastructure strategy to support smarter model tuning, data integration and security. Red Hat OpenShift AI now includes distributed serving across multiple graphics processing units and built-in guardrails to reduce prompt injection risks, while Red Hat Linux Enterprise AI adds multilingual support and new interfaces for customizing large language models such as Granite 3.1. These enhancements reflect Red Hat’s push to help enterprises fine-tune models across hybrid cloud architecture using their own data across on-prem, cloud and edge environments. This year’s event attendees will have the chance to go deeper with these tools and hear directly from the engineers and innovators building them.

“At Red Hat Summit, you won’t just hear about the future; you’ll engage with the people building it,” Strechay said. “From AI inference efficiency and OpenShift Virtualization to next-gen Linux and automation at scale, this is where platform engineering, development and infrastructure teams level up, together.”

Virtualization, automation and simplification converge in OpenShift 4.18

Virtual machine modernization is taking on new urgency as enterprises seek ways to unify legacy workloads with container-native operations. Red Hat’s OpenShift Virtualization, anchored by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation-backed KubeVirt project, offers a platform-level solution for managing both within a single orchestrated environment — a foundational element of hybrid cloud architecture. Interest is growing rapidly across industries, with adoption expanding well beyond early-phase experimentation and fresh use cases set to be explored on the 2025 Red Hat Summit stage, according to Badani.

“We’re one of the creators of the KubeVirt project … and that forms a basis of our OpenShift Virtualization capability that’s available as part of our OpenShift platform,” he said. “My guess is … the number of customers that we’ve got probably [has] tripled … and there are customers of all kinds who are embracing this. Traditional financial services, manufacturers, telcos [and] public sector organizations. Across the world, we are seeing a huge amount of interest in this area.”

OpenShift 4.18 introduced a wave of virtualization and networking updates aimed at reducing complexity across hybrid infrastructure. New features include user-defined networking, support for Border Gateway Protocol and preview support for virtual machine storage migration — all designed to improve connectivity, streamline VM management and enable seamless movement of workloads. These additions reflect growing demand for adaptable, cloud-ready infrastructure that supports advanced enterprise networking and strengthens hybrid cloud architecture. These capabilities, including Red Hat’s customer collaboration strategies, will likely be highlighted through product sessions and customer stories during the event.

“We’ll start off with customers,” Badani said. “We’ll do an assessment, whether it’s us or some of our partners. We will … start classifying the kinds of VMs and the workloads that need to be moved. Along with customers, we’ll decide, ‘Which ones are we going to replatform? Which ones will we refactor?’ The beauty of the OpenShift Virtualization solution is that those workloads, those VMs that are running, are running and being orchestrated in the same way as the rest of your OpenShift workloads are. There’s a lot of power to that solution.”

TheCUBE event livestream

Don’t miss theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit, from May 19-21. Plus, you can watch theCUBE’s event coverage on-demand after the live event.

How to watch theCUBE interviews

We offer you various ways to watch theCUBE’s coverage of Red Hat Summit, including theCUBE’s dedicated website and YouTube channel. You can also get all the coverage from this year’s events on  News.

TheCUBE Insights podcast

News also has podcasts available of archived interview sessions, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify, which you can enjoy while on the go.

News also has analyst deep dives in our Breaking Analysis podcast, available on iTunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

Guests

During Red Hat Summit, theCUBE analysts will talk with Red Hat executives, engineers and ecosystem partners to explore how open-source innovation is shaping hybrid cloud architecture, AI platforms and enterprise automation. Featured guests include Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks, CTO Chris Wright, CPO Ashesh Badani and SVP Stefanie Chiras. Plus we’ll talk with expert guests from AMD, Intel, Google Cloud, AWS and Ford Motor.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Red Hat Summit. Neither Red Hat Inc., the primary sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or News.)

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