Red Hat has introduced new advancements to its software family that make it easier for enterprises to build, deploy and manage AI applications on the hybrid cloud, including integrated creative AI capabilities.
At its Red Hat Summit in Denver, the company today (May 7) announced a new version of Red Hat OpenShift AI, which trains, monitors and manages the lifecycle of AI/ML models and applications in a containerized Kubernetes environment. is a software platform for – On premises and in the cloud.
The new features include the ability to deploy AI models to remote, edge locations and “improved model serving,” allowing enterprises to deploy predictive and creative AI apps into production, the company said. Available.
Red Hat also announced plans to extend its Lightspeed generative AI capabilities to its OpenShift Kubernetes container platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS. To address the skills gap as hybrid cloud adoption grows, OpenShift Lightspeed can now help IT administrators auto-scaling clusters in the public cloud.
To further address the complexities of managing AI in the hybrid cloud, Red Hat also introduced “policy-as-code” as part of its Red Hat Ansible automation software, which automates IT management tasks. .
Instead of creating processes manually, which is time-consuming and can result in human error, enterprises can use code to enforce policies across their infrastructure, says IDC Research vice president Jevon Jensen. can use to ensure they meet governance, risk and compliance (GRC) requirements. .
“It's really important for AI. It's all about putting guards in place,” he explained Knowledge of data center.
The updates were well received by industry analysts, who said Red Hat's improved OpenShift AI and other software improvements have important strategic implications for the business.
Red Hat's AI vision
In total, Red Hat made 28 announcements at the Red Hat Summit today, and more than half of them (16 to be exact) mentioned AI in the headline. The big picture is that the pace of AI innovation is increasing, which offers a lot of opportunities for businesses – but also poses risks. At a media news briefing this week, Steven Havels, vice president and general manager of Red Hat's AI business unit, said challenges include the cost of running AI models in the cloud, and that's why a hybrid cloud approach is important.
Havels said customers want to assess in the cloud, on-premises, and at the edge. He added that Red Hat's latest development gives customers the flexibility and confidence to build and deploy their AI workloads on the hybrid cloud while minimizing risks.
“They can train in the data center, but then they want to deploy across multiple platforms. So, at this point, AI has become the ultimate hybrid workload, and customers are designing with that in mind, Huels said. “This is truly in line with Red Hat's hybrid cloud strategy. We have always been the trusted enterprise source for these enterprise data center systems across multiple platforms.
Analysts' response
Analysts say the new version of Red Hat's OpenShift AI and other software improvements across the company's portfolio are significant and could lead to further adoption.
“This positions Red Hat as a neutral, cloud-native platform player with a strong focus on helping companies take advantage of AI — and in particular Creative AI – very secure, (highly) performing, and easily manageable,” says Brad. Shaman, Omdia's Chief Analyst for AI and Data Analytics.
Red Hat competes against VMware, but open source options and even companies like IBM Watson and DataRobot, Dataiku, and Databricks, which have their own AI platforms, can also be seen as competitors, Ritu Jyoti , IDC's Worldwide AI and Group Vice President added. Automation Research.
Red Hat is also in “collaboration” with cloud vendors such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. They compete because cloud providers have their own AI and Kubernetes platforms. But they are also partners because they provide Red Hat solutions in the cloud.
Jyoti said Red Hat's software solutions are attractive to organizations that want flexibility and choice and the ability to operate in a hybrid cloud environment.
Enterprises that can gravitate toward and adopt OpenShift AI include those in the early stages of their AI journey, open-source loyalists, and those in financial services and healthcare, he said. Highly regulated industries include companies.
According to Jyoti, Red Hat's large ecosystem of partners, which includes support for a wide variety of GPUs and accelerator chips, is also a key selling point.
“Red Hat's value proposition is flexibility and portability,” he said. “Their customers I've talked to love Red Hat OpenShift AI because it gives them the capabilities they want.”
New Features of RedHat OpenShift AI
Jyoti said Red Hat OpenShift AI version 2.9's support for edge deployment of AI models is critical due to latency and performance requirements. He said it's important for some industries, such as manufacturing and healthcare, to run their AI workloads at the edge where their data resides.
Another new feature – Enhanced Model Serving – allows organizations to optimize the deployment of predictive and creative AI workloads through KServe, vLLM, and Text Generation Inference Server (TGIS), the company said.
“If you have 100,000 people guessing on an app, you know your model is going to cost a ton of money, so you need to optimize the process. The framework that offers this to users will give the most benefit in terms of their hardware,” Shaman said.
Other new OpenShift AI features include workload distribution with Ray, model monitoring visualizations that track how AI models are performing, and new accelerator profiles that allow users to optimize their workloads for specific workloads, the company said. Enables choosing the appropriate accelerator chips for
Red Hat Light Speed
Red Hat said it will add its Lightspeed generative AI capabilities to OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The company first introduced LiteSpeed to Ansible last year, which helps novice users automate tasks using text in plain English.
For example, if an IT administrator knows how to do a task on-premises but doesn't know how to do the same task on AWS, the IT administrator can use Ansible Lightspeed to generate YAML code and find the correct plain text. Can write the question. Responsive playbooks for making this work on AWS.
Similarly, OpenShift Lightspeed will be an AI-based virtual assistant that will help IT administrators run, manage, troubleshoot and repair their OpenShift Kubernetes environments, Jensen said. For example, it can suggest a solution to a problem or suggest a best course of action, he said.
“It can compare a well-performing cluster to one that's not performing well and give you suggestions to improve performance,” Jensen said.
As for Lightspeed on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the Generative AI service can alert an IT staff that a Red Hat security advisory has just been issued with a fix. IT staff can use simple commands to schedule patching during the next production maintenance window, the company said.
OpenShift Lightspeed will be available in late 2024. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Lightspeed is currently in the planning phase, the company said.
In other Red Hat Summit news, the company announced:
- 'Image mode' for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Image Mode, now available as a Technical Preview, delivers the OS as a container image and enables the OS to be fully managed using container-based tooling and concepts. DevOps teams can plug the OS into their CI/CD and GitOps workflows. Image Mode also simplifies security management and allows solution providers to more easily build, test, and distribute Red Hat Linux Enterprise-based apps.
- Podman AI Lab. Podman AI Lab, an extension to Podman Desktop, allows developers to build, test and run generative AI apps in containers on their local workstation.
- Policy as code for responsive automation platforms. This feature will be available as a Tech Preview in the coming months.
Red Hat's announcements today include partnerships with Pure Storage, Run:ai, Elasticity and Stability AI, and the availability of Red Hat OpenShift on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Red Hat also announced that OpenShift AI will support AMD's Instinct GPUs, Intel's Gaudi AI accelerator., and integrated with Intel Xeon processors and Nvidia's “NIM” microservices, accelerating the development of AI-powered enterprise applications.