Tech giant positions hybrid cloud platform for enterprise AI production and VM migration
IBM unveiled two new fully managed cloud services designed to help enterprises bridge the gap between AI experimentation and production deployment while modernizing their virtualization infrastructure. The launch of Red Hat AI Inference on IBM Cloud and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Service on IBM Cloud marks the company’s latest effort to provide comprehensive hybrid cloud solutions built on Red Hat technology.
Closing the AI Production Gap
Red Hat AI Inference on IBM Cloud addresses a persistent challenge facing enterprises: moving AI workloads from pilot projects into production environments. The managed service eliminates the complexity of managing GPUs and infrastructure, allowing organizations to deploy AI models with consistent performance and predictable costs.
The platform runs on Red Hat AI’s high-performance inference engine powered by vLLM, optimized for high throughput and low latency. At launch, the model catalog includes IBM’s Granite 4.0 H Small, Mistral-Small-3.2-24B-Instruct, Llama 3.3 70B Instruct, GPT-OSS-120B, and Nemotron-3-Nano-30B-FP8, with additional open and custom models planned starting later this month.
Built-in governance controls integrate with IBM Cloud IAM, audit logging, privacy controls, and SLA-backed reliability to provide enterprises with visibility over model use. Developers can integrate quickly using OpenAI-compatible APIs without needing to manage GPUs or tune runtimes.
Jason McGee, CTO of IBM Cloud, emphasized the production-ready nature of the offering: “With Red Hat AI Inference on IBM Cloud, we’re giving clients a managed platform that is built for real workloads, not just experiments“.
Managed Virtualization for Enterprise Workloads
The second new service targets enterprises reassessing their virtualization strategies amid demands for predictable economics and clearer upgrade paths. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Service on IBM Cloud delivers a managed virtualization platform designed for hybrid cloud environments, running on IBM Cloud VPC Bare Metal infrastructure.
IBM handles the complete platform lifecycle, including upgrades, patching, automated recovery, and worker-node remediation, allowing IT teams to focus on virtual machines and applications rather than underlying infrastructure. The service includes integrated migration tooling, such as the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization, to facilitate transitions from legacy environments with minimal disruption.
The offering creates a foundation for future containerization and application modernization while providing operational stability, security, compliance, and predictable costs.
Strategic Partnership Expansion
The announcement extends IBM’s portfolio of Red Hat managed platform offerings, which already includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, and Red Hat AI. Ashesh Badani, senior vice president and chief product officer at Red Hat, described the services as empowering “clients to modernize at their own pace while preparing for an AI-driven future“.
IBM Cloud is currently the only cloud provider offering a fully managed Red Hat AI add-on with access to complete Red Hat AI capabilities. The company backs its virtualization service with support from IBM Technology Expert Labs, IBM Consulting, Red Hat Services, and global system integrator partners to help enterprises migrate at scale.
Availability
Red Hat AI Inference on IBM Cloud becomes generally available on May 22, 2026. Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization Service on IBM Cloud is currently in limited availability, with general availability expected in June 2026.
The dual launch reflects IBM’s strategy to provide enterprises with production-grade infrastructure for both emerging AI workloads and traditional virtualized applications, positioning the company to capture demand as organizations accelerate hybrid cloud adoption.
