The virtualization and AI worlds are converging, bringing both challenges and opportunities for organizations and IT teams.

The Dell Technologies Inc. and Red Hat Inc. partnership sits at the heart of this shift, offering solutions to simplify operations for enterprises navigating AI-driven complexities, according to Alyson Langon (pictured, right), director of product marketing for multicloud and HCI at Dell Technologies.

TheCUBE unpacks the Dell/Red Hat partnership with Alyson Langon and Stu Miniman.

“With the complexity out there right now between the virtualization landscape and the pace of AI, there’s more pressure than ever to keep pace and invest in solutions that keep [a company’s] path forward in the future in mind,” Langon said. “A good example of this is container adoption. With 67% of organizations having container-based production applications today, and another 18% looking to have deployed container-based applications within the next 12 months, it’s imperative to have a container management strategy in place.”

Langon and Stu Miniman (left), senior director of market insights, hybrid platforms at Red Hat, spoke with theCUBE Research’s Rob Strechay at the “Build Now and for the Future With Dell & Red Hat” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed both companies combining containerization, virtualization and AI into a single, flexible platform, empowering enterprises to meet today’s challenges while positioning themselves for future success. (* Disclosure below.)

Virtualization and AI: Merging two disparate worlds

With its OpenShift container orchestration platform, Red Hat has evolved considerably over the past decade. However, a significant challenge for the company has been integrating virtual machines into modern architectures centered on containerization. Having Dell as a partner has been key to chiseling away at that challenge, according to Miniman.

“When we launched this update to the partnership with Dell, we started with that containerization because while we’ve been on this journey with OpenShift for over a decade … it’s always, how do I make that simpler?” he said. “Dell has such a great track record at building those solutions, working on those joint integrations, everything from that day one through the entire life cycle. We try to take that cloud-native ecosystem, curate it, integrate it and maintain it for you. But with partnering with Dell, we get all the way down to the hardware level, that entire piece.”

OpenShift Virtualization, now part of the Dell APEX solution, allows VMs to coexist with containerized applications within the same environment. This convergence represents a major step forward in simplifying IT operations by ensuring that cloud-native and traditional workloads can be managed within the same architecture, Miniman added.

“We want to make sure it all works — storage, networking and compute all need to have those underlying components,” he said. “The big change here is how do we bring virtual machines into this environment? Now we can bring virtual machines into that modern architecture with OpenShift Virtualization, and now that’s part of the Dell APEX for OpenShift solution.”

This innovation allows companies to balance containerization, virtualization and AI, with a clear path for those hesitant to fully embrace cloud-native solutions. The partnership ensures that VMs can be transitioned into a containerized world, eliminating the need for separate infrastructures and management systems, according to Miniman.

Virtualization in the changing IT landscape

A marked transformation is underway in the virtualization space, as more organizations pivot to looking beyond traditional solutions such as VMware. This shift has opened up new opportunities for platforms such as APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift, which offers both containerized and virtualized workloads within a unified cloud operating model, according to Langon.

“The APEX Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift was built with simplicity and ease of use in mind,” she said. “Being able to run OpenShift on-prem and getting cloud-like agility and efficiency on bare metal, with built-in software automation and full-stack lifecycle management, provides you the flexibility and choice to set you up for running your applications today and into the future. It’s really ‘build now and for the future’ on a unified platform that can consolidate.”

As more organizations seek to integrate gen AI into their operations, the ability to manage both VMs and containers within a single platform will become increasingly important. The partnership between Dell and Red Hat ensures that customers have the tools they need to navigate virtualization and AI while maintaining the simplicity, reliability and automation needed to stay competitive, Langon added.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of the “Build Now and for the Future With Dell & Red Hat” event: 

Watch the full event discussion here:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the “Build Now and for the Future With Dell & Red Hat” event. Neither Dell Technologies Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE