By: Ashish Gulati, Associate Vice President - Cloud & Infra

What happens when AI innovation meets infrastructure modernization at scale? The Red Hat Summit 2025, held from May 19 to 22 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, brought together thousands of open-source innovators, technologists, and industry leaders. The event underscored Red Hat’s continued focus on hybrid cloud solutions, AI-driven enterprise transformation, and cloud-native modernization. This year, the spotlight was on two key advancements: Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization and Red Hat OpenShift AI.

A significant highlight was the announcement that OpenShift Virtualization is now accessible not just on-premises but also across leading public cloud platforms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure(OCI). This expanded cross-platform availability enables enterprises to manage virtual machines (VMs) and containers within a unified environment, supporting both hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures.

Additionally, OpenShift AI is evolving rapidly as a production-ready machine learning operations (MLOps) platform. It helps organizations development, deployment, and scaling of AI models. Through deep integration of open-source tools, Red Hat is making AI more practical, accessible, and impactful for a range of real-world business use cases.

In this blog, we explore the latest advancements in OpenShift Virtualization and OpenShift AI, emphasizing their relevance through real-world examples shared at the Red Hat Summit.

OpenShift Virtualization

Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization is designed to manage both traditional VM-based workloads and container-native applications on a single platform. Built as an extension of OpenShift, it enables organizations to consolidate infrastructure, reduce complexity, and modernize operations without abandoning investments in legacy virtual machines.

At Red Hat Summit 2025, Red Hat introduced new enhancements to the OpenShift Virtualization Engine, a cost-optimized edition tailored for enterprises running VMs at scale. This virtualization-only option supports businesses that may not yet be ready to fully embrace containerization but are seeking alternatives to legacy virtualization licensing models.

With the OpenShift Virtualization Engine, customers can:

• Run VMs using the same Kubernetes-native platform used for container workloads
• Avoid vendor lock-in with a subscription-based, open-source approach
• Modernize operations by applying GitOps and CI/CD principles to VM lifecycle management
• Ensure consistency across hybrid environments including on-premises, AWS, Azure, GCP, and IBM Cloud

New features unveiled at the summit include:

• User-Defined Networks (UDNs): This enables isolated, overlapping networks
• Virtualization Dashboard: Provides an intuitive interface for enhanced administrative visibility
• Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) improvements: Facilitate smoother transitions from legacy hypervisors to OpenShift.

Together, OpenShift Virtualization and the new Virtualization Engine help organizations evolve their IT environments gradually—supporting infrastructure modernization while laying the groundwork for container-native operations.

OpenShift AI

Red Hat OpenShift AI is a comprehensive MLOps platform that streamlines the lifecycle of AI and machine learning (ML) models across hybrid cloud and edge environments. By tightly coupling data science workflows with infrastructure automation, OpenShift AI helps organizations move more quickly from model development to deployment.

Key features highlighted at Red Hat Summit 2025 include:

• Enhanced model serving: Integration of the very large language model (vLLM) serving runtime with KServe supports efficient deployment of generative AI applications.
• Advanced experimentation Tools: Capabilities such as hyperparameter tuning via Ray Tune and enhanced data science pipelines support more robust experimentation and model comparisons.
• Hardware flexibility: Compatibility with advanced micro devices (AMD) graphics processing units (GPUs) broadens hardware choices for AI workloads.

These capabilities position OpenShift AI as a versatile and scalable platform that enables organizations to develop and deploy AI models efficiently and securely. It fosters collaboration among data scientists, developers, and IT operations, integrating AI into enterprise applications, delivering tangible value.

Use Cases

At Red Hat Summit 2025, global enterprises across industries shared how OpenShift Virtualization and OpenShift AI are enabling innovation across industries:

•  NASA uses OpenShift to support mission-critical workloads, enabling scalable compute environments for space-related research and satellite data processing.
• Ford Motor Company employs OpenShift Virtualization to modernize legacy manufacturing systems and support software-defined vehicle initiatives across hybrid cloud environments.
•  Turkish Airlines modernized its application stack using Red Hat OpenShift to improve customer experience and streamline digital operations across its international network.
•  Emirates NBD, one of the largest banking groups in the Middle East, adopted OpenShift AI to accelerate its AI-first strategy, developing intelligent banking services and deploying models faster.
•  BMW and Banco Galicia (Argentina Financial Institution) are leveraging OpenShift AI for autonomous systems, fraud detection, and intelligent customer engagement.

These stories show how OpenShift is supporting scalable, enterprise-grade innovation across industries such as aerospace, automotive, finance, and transportation.

Conclusion

Red Hat Summit 2025 demonstrated the company’s dedication to advancing open-source technologies that address the evolving needs of modern enterprises. The latest innovations in OpenShift Virtualization and OpenShift AI offer robust, flexible platforms for managing workloads, modernizing infrastructure, and accelerating AI adoption.

As shown by industry use cases, organizations embracing these solutions can improve agility, scalability, and resilience—navigating complex IT environments while laying the foundation for future-ready transformation.

Bridging Innovation Through Collaboration

The success of solutions like OpenShift AI and OpenShift Virtualization also depends on strong collaborations within the enterprise ecosystem. Technology service providers working closely with Red Hat bring added value by helping clients navigate implementation complexity and maximize impact.

One such example is the collaboration between Red Hat and LTIMindtree. As a strategic system integrator, LTIMindtree integrates Red Hat technologies, including OpenShift Virtualization and OpenShift AI, into transformation roadmaps where they align with clients’ modernization goals. This partnership also benefits from continuous enablement by Red Hat, which helps LTIMindtree strengthen its delivery capabilities across hybrid cloud, container orchestration, and AI/ML integration.

Such ecosystem collaboration ensures that enterprises not only adopt open-source-powered solutions but also operationalize them effectively—balancing innovation with long-term scalability and resilience.