Red Hat launches AI assistant to simplify hybrid cloud use
Red Hat has announced the general availability of Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed, a generative AI-based virtual assistant integrated with its OpenShift platform.
This tool is designed to enhance the deployment and management of application platforms across hybrid cloud environments by providing users with AI-powered guidance and assistance.
The aim of OpenShift Lightspeed is to address the challenges faced by users of Red Hat OpenShift, particularly as organisations increasingly rely on hybrid cloud solutions powered by Kubernetes. The assistant is intended to help less experienced users become proficient more quickly and allow more experienced IT staff to focus on higher-value tasks.
Mike Barrett, Vice President, Hybrid Platforms at Red Hat, commented on the challenges facing IT teams, stating, "Delivering AI-enabled applications is a top priority for organizations around the globe, but many IT teams already struggle with the complexities associated with hybrid cloud computing, let alone bringing these intelligent applications to life. Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed helps flatten the learning curve for Red Hat OpenShift users, enabling novices to get started more quickly and more experienced users to maximize efficiencies on the industry's leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes. With Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed, organizations can improve their productivity, freeing up time and putting a greater focus on delivering innovation to their customers."
The company references research by IDC, which forecasts that over 90% of organisations worldwide will be affected by a shortage of IT skills by 2026, potentially leading to USD $5.5 trillion in losses due to product delays and lost business. Red Hat presents OpenShift Lightspeed as a solution to the anticipated skills gap, as it provides in-console, AI-driven assistance tailored specifically for OpenShift users.
The new feature appears as an intelligent guide within the OpenShift web console. It offers tailored assistance and proactive, step-by-step support, designed to help IT teams of varying experience levels manage complex application environments with greater efficiency and confidence. Users can interact with OpenShift Lightspeed via natural language, asking questions about OpenShift and receiving answers that leverage Red Hat's accumulated expertise in hybrid cloud application management.
One function allows users to share data from their own environments within the chat window, enabling the assistant to give contextually relevant responses on topics such as troubleshooting and cluster resource management.
OpenShift Lightspeed offers integration with various generative AI model providers, including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and WatsonX. For organisations with specific control or security requirements, private AI options hosted on Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI and Red Hat OpenShift AI are also supported. This flexibility allows businesses to select the AI models that best fit their particular needs.
The technology introduces a feature known as cluster-interaction, offered as a technology preview, which enables the virtual assistant to retrieve context directly from user clusters. This allows for more precise answers tailored to a given environment, differentiating it from more generalised guidance.
Customisation is further supported through the bring your own knowledge (BYO Knowledge) feature, also available in technology preview. This capability lets organisations integrate their own documentation and organisational knowledge into the assistant, with the aim of generating responses that reflect their processes and preferred methods of using OpenShift.
As hybrid cloud environments increasingly combine both containerised applications and virtualised workloads, managing these systems can be complex. OpenShift Lightspeed also delivers guidance specific to OpenShift Virtualization, assisting users with tasks such as migrating from legacy virtualisation vendors and integrating virtual machines alongside containerised applications. This support covers areas including VM migrations, networking, and storage, which is intended to simplify efforts to modernise infrastructure.
Thomas Munoz, Core SRE Manager, Shopping, Amadeus, shared his perspective on the technology: "As a leading provider of advanced technology solutions within the global travel industry, our company prioritizes using innovative technologies to better serve our customers. Red Hat OpenShift has already helped us streamline operations and reduce time to market for new services. We look forward to exploring Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed as we see strong potential for the technology to help us further accelerate and simplify the way our teams operate."
Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed is expected to be available in June 2025.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Techday NZ
3 days ago
- Techday NZ
VDURA unveils HyperScaleFlow v11.2 to cut AI storage costs
VDURA has introduced Version 11.2 of its Data Platform, HyperScaleFlow, which brings enhancements to support artificial intelligence and high-performance computing workloads. The latest release delivers native Kubernetes Container Storage Interface (CSI) support, comprehensive end-to-end encryption, and the launch of VDURACare Premier, a support package that combines hardware, software, and maintenance under a single contract. A preview of the V-ScaleFlow capability is also included, which manages data movement between high-performance QLC flash and high-capacity hard drives to improve efficiency for AI-scale operations and reduce costs. According to VDURA, native CSI support eases multi-tenant Kubernetes deployments by enabling persistent-volume provisioning and management without scripting. The new end-to-end encryption feature provides security for data from transfer through to storage, including tenant-specific encryption per volume. VDURACare Premier offers comprehensive support through a single contract, covering hardware, software, and services such as a ten-year no-cost replacement policy for drives and 24-hour expert assistance. The V-ScaleFlow technology, currently in preview within the software, introduces an optimised data management layer. It dynamically orchestrates placement and movement of data between QLC SSDs, such as the Pascari 128TB, and high-density hard drives exceeding 30TB each. This approach aims to reduce flash capacity requirements by more than 50 percent and cut power consumption, which the company says delivers significant cost savings for organisations building AI data pipelines. The V-ScaleFlow system tackles industry challenges associated with write-intensive AI checkpoints and long-term data storage by using V-Burst to absorb demand spikes and write data sequentially to large NVMe drives, halving the amount of flash needed. For long-tail datasets and historic artefacts, the system moves data to high-capacity hard drives, which is intended to reduce both operational expenses and energy usage per petabyte stored. The VDURACare Premier bundle addresses the complexity seen in contracts that separate hardware, software, and maintenance through a combined package with risk-free coverage across a decade. Benefits highlighted for Version 11.2 and V-ScaleFlow include seamless data movement between flash and disks, optimised storage economics that can lower total cost of ownership by up to 60 percent, sub-millisecond latency for NVMe-class performance, and streamlined Kubernetes deployment for stateful AI workloads. Ken Claffey, Chief Executive Officer of VDURA, said: "V11.2 delivers the speed, cloud-native simplicity, and security our customers expect - while V-ScaleFlow applies hyperscaler design principles, leveraging the same commodity SSDs and HDDs to enable efficient scaling and breakthrough economics." VDURA stated that Data Platform V11.2 will become generally available on new V5000 systems during the third quarter of 2025. The full release of V-ScaleFlow is anticipated in the fourth quarter of 2025. Current V5000 users will have access to upgrade to Version 11.2 through an online update process. VDURA is presenting the capabilities of its data platform at ISC 2025, alongside partners such as Phison Pascari, Seagate Mozaic, Starfish, and Cornelis Networks. The company is hosting the VDURA AI Data Challenge, an event featuring strongman Hafþór Björnsson, which will allow attendees to engage with interactive data tasks and evaluate GPU-optimised data performance. Commenting on the technology, Michael Wu, President and General Manager of Phison U.S., said: "Phison has collaborated closely with VDURA to validate V-ScaleFlow technology, enabling seamless integration of our highest-capacity QLC Pascari enterprise SSDs in the VDURA Data Platform. V-Burst optimises write-intensive AI workloads, delivering exceptional performance and endurance while driving down costs - a game-changer for HPC and AI environments." Trey Layton, Vice President of Software and Product Management for Advanced Computing at Penguin Solutions, added: "Penguin Solutions is excited to see VDURA's V11.2 release and breakthrough features that include V-ScaleFlow, native CSI support, and end-to-end encryption that advance the operational goals of our enterprise, federal, and cloud customers. These enhancements simplify persistent storage orchestration across Kubernetes environments, ensure robust security without performance tradeoffs, and unlock compelling TCO improvements for organisations scaling AI and HPC workloads. VDURA continues to deliver a platform purpose-built for the future of real-time, inference-driven infrastructure."
Techday NZ
3 days ago
- Techday NZ
DuploCloud launches AI DevOps Help Desk to boost automation
DuploCloud has launched the DuploCloud AI DevOps Help Desk, described as the industry's first Agentic Help Desk where specialised DevOps agents address user requests in real time. The new platform allows DevOps engineers and IT administrators to shift their roles from writing automation scripts to creating AI agents designed to tackle a wide range of end-user needs. DuploCloud states that as artificial intelligence continues to drive rapid development and scalability within technology teams, the function of DevOps becomes critical yet increasingly challenging. Many current automation tools, the company notes, still rely heavily upon subject matter expertise, and the process of hiring skilled DevOps professionals is both difficult and costly. According to the company, its platform has already provided support to a large number of high-growth businesses, including start-ups and enterprises, through an automation platform that covers the breadth of DevOps. This includes infrastructure-as-code (IaC), Kubernetes management, cloud services, observability, security, and compliance. DuploCloud highlights that frequent collaboration with clients and management of thousands of environments naturally led to integrating AI into its operations. The resultant Agentic Help Desk, now part of DuploCloud's core platform, is aimed at enabling customers to scale more quickly, automate more processes, and free up time for other priorities. Venkat Thiruvengadam, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of DuploCloud, commented on the complexity of operating cloud infrastructure and the slow pace of automation adaptation. "Building and operating cloud infrastructure continues to grow in complexity. The pace of DevOps automation constantly lags behind the ever-changing engineering and security needs of cloud infrastructure. Meaningful developer self-service remains elusive," he said. "DuploCloud's AI DevOps Help Desk represents a strategic leap forward in how DevOps is executed. Achieving unprecedented speed, efficiency, and reliability, fundamentally reshaping cloud operations." The traditional IT Help Desk is generally structured as a manual, asynchronous model, limited by human resources. DuploCloud's Agentic DevOps Help Desk aims to replace this with a real-time, agent-driven system where user requests are routed directly to the relevant AI agent. Through the system, users are able to state their requirements in plain language. The designated agent then responds with appropriate context, executes actions within secure permissions, and has the capacity to escalate tasks or collaborate with other agents if needed. The process also integrates human-in-the-loop elements, such as approval workflows, audit trails, screen share capabilities, and real-time user input, all embedded to provide user control without impacting efficiency. The platform is reported to include an Automation Studio, centralised around an MCP server, which provides tools compatible with various infrastructure environments including Kubernetes, public cloud providers, open telemetry, and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CICD) systems. Feedback from early adopters indicates that the AI DevOps Help Desk is being used to update infrastructure practices via containerisation and Kubernetes, address performance concerns, and execute cost optimisation procedures. Teams have reported the ability to automate up to 80% of routine DevSecOps tasks using custom agents calibrated to their specific workflows. The automation platform has reduced the time required for new application onboarding from weeks to minutes, and has halved the time to achieve and maintain industry compliance standards such as SOC2, HIPAA, and PCI. The Agentic Help Desk is currently accessible to customers through an early access programme.
Techday NZ
3 days ago
- Techday NZ
Ataccama ONE brings document AI to Snowflake for better data
Ataccama has announced the integration of its unified data trust platform, Ataccama ONE, with Document AI on the Snowflake Marketplace, allowing businesses to transform unstructured content into structured data for analytics and artificial intelligence applications. The announcement from Ataccama enables enterprises to extract, structure, govern, and monitor the quality of unstructured data, making a greater proportion of their information usable for analytics, AI, and business operations. With the majority of enterprise information now classed as unstructured data and continuing to grow rapidly, many organisations struggle to manage this resource effectively. Industry research from IDC indicates that unstructured data accounts for most enterprise data and is expanding by more than 55% annually. According to market findings, 95% of businesses face difficulties in managing their unstructured data, with over half citing it as the most challenging type of information to govern. Unstructured data frequently remains siloed and difficult to leverage, creating operational risk and impacting the reliability of AI systems as these systems increasingly rely on such data for powering large language models and retrieval-augmented generation applications. Through the integration of Ataccama ONE and Document AI within the Snowflake environment, enterprises can convert documents such as contracts, invoices, and PDFs into structured records. Natural language prompts—such as, "What is the effective date of the contract?"—are processed by the Arctic-TILT large language model developed by Snowflake, generating structured outputs stored directly in Snowflake tables. Ataccama ONE then connects to the resulting data tables to profile the data, perform quality checks, and manage governance policies on the structured outputs. The system also allows companies to follow the data through analytics, reporting, and AI workflows by capturing lineage at the table level. Additional metadata can be added from the original documents to increase traceability where required. This process aims to reduce manual intervention, build trust in the data, and enable repeatable workflows for business teams. Speaking to the importance of unlocking value from unstructured data, Sam Wong, Senior Director of Data & AI at a global beverage company, said: "Unstructured data is an untapped data source as real business context lives there, but it's also the hardest to govern. Documents, contracts, and communications contain the terms, conditions, and risks that structured systems miss. Without a way to extract, validate, and manage that information at scale, AI lacks the foundation it needs to be reliable. With Ataccama ONE and Document AI inside Snowflake, organizations can turn thousands of documents into trusted, structured data. That will give us improved analytics, enhanced data quality, and a better foundation for powerful and trustworthy AI." This integration offers several capabilities for users. Companies can extract structured data from documents using natural language, specifying prompts such as "What is the payment term?" to convert unstructured information into structured outputs without the need for custom code. The extracted data is immediately available for use in reporting, analytics, and AI activities, as it is saved directly into Snowflake tables, ready for consumption by business intelligence tools and model pipelines without further transformation. Ataccama ONE provides automated profiling and rule-based validation to monitor the quality of unstructured data on a continual basis, assisting teams in detecting inconsistencies and managing risks early. Document AI models can be trained and reused within Snowsight, allowing for standardised extraction across various document types at scale, including contracts, invoices, and policies. All processes, validation, and governance are performed natively in Snowflake, reducing integration complexity and improving security. Jay Limburn, Chief Product Officer at Ataccama, said: "Unstructured data remains a black box for most organizations, even as it becomes critical for AI and business operations. Without a way to structure, govern, and trust that information, enterprises risk missing the full value of their data. Ataccama ONE combines data quality, governance, observability, lineage, and master data management in a single platform and now extends those capabilities to unstructured content. This allows organizations to improve trust and confidence in all their data, structured and unstructured alike, and build a stronger foundation for AI, analytics, and operational decision-making." Kieran Kennedy, Vice President, Data Cloud Products at Snowflake, said: "Ataccama's presence on Snowflake Marketplace reinforces the value of our integrated platform approach that allows our partners to bring their innovative solutions to market within the Snowflake environment. With this solution, joint customers have the power to streamline document extraction, ensure data quality, and accelerate insight delivery, all within a governed and scalable environment."
