Red Hat, Inc. announced an extended collaboration with Microsoft to streamline and scale artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (gen AI) deployments in the cloud. With this collaboration, Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI (RHEL AI) will be available on Azure Marketplace as an optimized and validated foundation model platform to run on Microsoft Azure environments, as well as a bring-your-own-subscription (BYOS) offering.

In an industry defined by disruption, it is critical for organizations to adopt and maintain an adaptable technology stack that can readily integrate and support new capabilities. This is especially relevant for organizations as they pivot to AI-fueled business practices, which require AI-ready technologies spanning applications, data, platforms and infrastructure. RHEL AI on Microsoft Azure brings the necessary consistency and scalability for organizations to more seamlessly build, test and deploy gen AI models across hybrid cloud environments.

RHEL AI is a foundation model platform that powers gen AI innovation with enterprise-grade, open source-licensed Granite models and helps streamline model alignment to private enterprise data and use cases with InstructLab tooling. In addition, RHEL AI provides a ready-made pathway to Red Hat OpenShift AI for tuning and serving these models at scale while using the same tooling and concepts.

The availability of RHEL AI on Microsoft Azure builds upon a long-standing history of collaboration between Red Hat and Microsoft to help organizations unlock the power of open source to meet their business needs. RHEL AI is the latest AI-optimized Red Hat offering to be available on Microsoft Azure, joining others like Red Hat OpenShift AI and Azure Red Hat OpenShift - a fully managed turnkey application platform jointly developed and supported by Red Hat and Microsoft.

RHEL AI on Microsoft Azure will be available on the Azure Marketplace in December 2024.

"Red Hat is committed to helping organizations remain agile in today's AI-dominated industry while also keeping an eye on needs of the future by providing an adaptable, enterprise-grade AI platform. RHEL AI on Microsoft Azure empowers organizations to scale gen AI deployments with greater confidence and flexibility to act quickly on the opportunities that AI presents for their business today, and paving the way for the next wave of innovation tomorrow." - Joe Fernandes, vice president and general manager, AI Business Unit, Red Hat

"We're pleased to welcome Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, which gives our partners great exposure to cloud customers around the globe. Azure Marketplace offers world-class quality experiences from global trusted partners with solutions tested to work seamlessly with Azure." -  Jake Zborowski, General Manager, Microsoft Azure Platform, Microsoft Corp.