Following the lead of its parent company IBM Corp., Red Hat Inc. today said its Ansible Automation Platform Service is now available as a managed offering in Amazon Web Services Inc. Marketplace.

Ansible, an open-source configuration management tool, can be used to simplify the management of hybrid cloud infrastructure and automate complex activities. With a 31% market share, it’s the second most widely used tool in its category, behind only Terraform, according to 6Sense Insights Inc. The Ansible Automation Platform was recently named the leader in Forrester Research Inc.’s Wave for Infrastructure Automation Platforms.

Red Hat said its customers that also use AWS can now deploy automation at scale in the cloud without learning a new tool or integrating additional technologies. Ansible Automation Platform Service on AWS works with AWS billing to give full visibility into costs in one place, while also counting toward committed spend agreements with AWS.

Red Hat offers both managed and self-managed options. The self-managed offering brings greater customization and configuration, which is useful in regulated industries or by managed services partners that want to manage their tooling. The Red Hat-managed-and-monitored service includes premium support from Red Hat and permits more rapid deployment and development of Ansible Playbooks.

It also said it has signed a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to scale the availability of its open-source software in the AWS Marketplace more rapidly. The deal includes additional support for Red Hat OpenShift Service, a managed Kubernetes platform that customers can use to streamline virtual machine migrations and application modernization initiatives. The agreement also includes support for Windows virtualized workloads on OpenShift Virtualization via the OpenShift Service on AWS.

OpenShift Virtualization and the migration toolkit allow for easier and automated migration of VMs with auto-healing and reconciliation applied to both containers and VM workloads. Red Hat OpenShift will also run as a self-managed offering on AWS EC2 bare metal instances. Bare metal instances are physical servers dedicated to a single tenant. They often support workloads that demand high performance, reliability or specialized configurations.

By running OpenShift Virtualization on AWS EC2 bare metal instances, VM workloads can be migrated to a cloud platform while maintaining similar levels of performance and redundancy. VMs and containers can interact directly with underlying hardware and infrastructure to reduce administrative overhead and eliminate the need for a hypervisor layer.

International Data Corp. research director Gary Chen said companies need to consider the best way to optimize their virtualized infrastructure to use it as an “engine for modernization” that can support modern applications and AI services. “Organizations are looking for a strategic bridge between traditional VMs and modern, cloud-native applications, paving the way for future innovation while maintaining operational continuity,” he said.

As part of the collaboration, Red Hat is enhancing options for Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI and OpenShift AI in the AWS Marketplace. Both platforms are meant to facilitate the development, testing, and deployment of generative artificial intelligence models. Enhancements include the availability of “bring your own subscription” and private offers, with support for AI accelerators and graphic processing units from leading chip providers.

Stefanie Chiras, Red Hat’s senior vice president of partner ecosystem success, said that by strengthening its partnership with AWS, the company is giving customers greater choice over where they can run their workloads across hybrid clouds. In addition, it’s also giving customers more choice over how they can run their hybrid cloud workloads, she said.

“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,” she added.

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