Conference Description
Key Takeaways
- Full-day technical conference exploring hybrid cloud, AI deployment, automation maturity, and infrastructure modernisation
- Designed for IT leaders, architects, DevOps engineers, and security professionals from enterprise and public sector organisations
- Hands-on labs and workshops covering Red Hat OpenShift, Ansible Automation Platform, and virtualisation migration strategies
- Addresses software supply chain security, container hardening, and observability for distributed AI systems
- Sponsor ecosystem includes Intel, AWS, Microsoft, Nvidia, Cisco, IBM, and ServiceNow
Introduction
Red Hat Summit: Connect 2026 San Jose brings together enterprise IT professionals for a concentrated day of technical education focused on open source infrastructure, hybrid cloud architecture, and the operational challenges of deploying artificial intelligence at scale. The event arrives at a moment when organisations across finance, healthcare, telecommunications, and government are grappling with how to modernise legacy systems while simultaneously building the foundations for AI-driven automation—all without compromising security or losing control of costs.
The programme combines keynote presentations with breakout sessions, hands-on laboratories, and live demonstrations. Rather than presenting technology in isolation, the agenda emphasises practical implementation: how to migrate virtual machines to cloud-native platforms, how to extend automation beyond isolated use cases into enterprise-wide orchestration, and how to maintain observability across increasingly complex distributed systems.
About This Event
Summit: Connect represents the regional extension of Red Hat’s flagship annual conference, condensed into a single-day format that prioritises depth over breadth. The San Jose edition targets practitioners and decision-makers in the western United States, offering direct access to technical experts, product teams, and an ecosystem of technology partners.
The format balances executive-level strategic content with practitioner-focused technical sessions. Attendees can expect to move between keynote presentations addressing industry-wide trends and workshop environments where they work directly with technologies such as Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Ansible Automation Platform. This structure reflects a broader shift in enterprise technology events toward experiential learning, recognising that hands-on exposure accelerates adoption more effectively than passive presentation.
AI Deployment and Agentic Automation
A significant portion of the programme addresses the operational realities of deploying AI systems beyond proof-of-concept stages. The challenge facing most enterprises is not whether AI can deliver value but how to operationalise models reliably, securely, and at scale without proportional increases in headcount or infrastructure complexity.
Sessions explore Red Hat AI alongside integration patterns involving MLflow for model lifecycle management and frameworks such as LangGraph and LangChain for building agentic systems—AI applications capable of autonomous decision-making and task execution. The emergence of agentic automation introduces new requirements for observability, as traditional monitoring approaches struggle to provide visibility into systems where AI components interact dynamically with enterprise data and external services.
The event addresses these challenges directly, examining how organisations can instrument distributed AI systems to maintain reliability and auditability. For industries operating under regulatory scrutiny, such as financial services and healthcare, this observability layer is not optional but fundamental to compliance.
Infrastructure Modernisation and Virtualisation Migration
Many enterprises continue to operate substantial virtualised workloads on legacy platforms, facing pressure to modernise without disrupting business operations. The programme dedicates considerable attention to virtualisation migration strategies, particularly the transition from traditional hypervisors to OpenShift Virtualization.
This migration path allows organisations to run virtual machines alongside containers on a unified Kubernetes-based platform, reducing operational overhead and enabling gradual modernisation rather than disruptive lift-and-shift projects. The Migration Toolkit for Virtualization features prominently, providing automated assessment and migration capabilities that reduce the manual effort traditionally associated with platform transitions.
Related sessions cover Project Lightwell and Project Hummingbird, initiatives aimed at simplifying specific aspects of infrastructure modernisation. For organisations evaluating their virtualisation strategy in light of recent market changes, these sessions offer practical frameworks for planning and execution.
Security Across the Software Supply Chain
Security content at the event reflects the expanding threat surface that accompanies cloud-native adoption. Container environments introduce new attack vectors, and the software supply chain—the chain of dependencies, build processes, and deployment pipelines that deliver code to production—has become a primary target for sophisticated adversaries.
Sessions examine container security hardening, focusing on how organisations can reduce their attack surface through image scanning, runtime protection, and policy enforcement. The software supply chain receives particular attention, with content addressing how to verify the provenance of dependencies, secure build pipelines, and maintain integrity from development through production deployment.
For security architects and compliance teams, these sessions connect technical controls to regulatory requirements, demonstrating how open source tooling can support audit and attestation processes increasingly demanded by customers and regulators alike.
Enterprise Automation Maturity
Automation adoption in most enterprises follows a predictable pattern: initial success with isolated use cases followed by fragmentation as different teams implement automation independently, creating silos that limit enterprise-wide efficiency gains. The event addresses this maturity challenge directly, examining how organisations can evolve from tactical automation toward strategic, coordinated orchestration.
Ansible Automation Platform serves as the technical foundation for these discussions, but the content extends beyond tooling to address governance, standardisation, and the organisational changes required to operationalise automation at scale. Integration patterns with ServiceNow and other enterprise platforms demonstrate how automation can connect with existing IT service management workflows rather than operating in isolation.
Hybrid Cloud Strategy and Cost Optimisation
The hybrid cloud model—workloads distributed across on-premises infrastructure, private cloud, and public cloud providers—remains the dominant architecture for enterprises balancing performance, compliance, and cost requirements. Sessions explore how Red Hat OpenShift provides a consistent application platform across these environments, reducing the operational complexity that typically accompanies multi-cloud deployments.
Integration content covers partnerships with AWS and Microsoft, demonstrating how organisations can leverage public cloud capabilities while maintaining portability and avoiding vendor lock-in. OpenShift API for Data Protection addresses backup and disaster recovery requirements, a critical consideration for organisations running stateful workloads on Kubernetes.
Cost optimisation threads through multiple sessions, reflecting the economic pressures facing IT organisations. The focus is not simply on reducing expenditure but on maximising value—ensuring that infrastructure investments translate into measurable business outcomes rather than idle capacity or redundant tooling.
Who Should Attend
The event serves multiple constituencies within enterprise IT organisations. Technical practitioners—DevOps engineers, cloud architects, automation specialists, and security professionals—will find value in the hands-on laboratories and deep-dive technical sessions. Decision-makers including CIOs, CTOs, and IT directors benefit from strategic content addressing technology roadmaps, risk management, and investment prioritisation.
Organisations currently evaluating virtualisation migration, expanding automation programmes, or planning AI deployment will find directly applicable content. Those operating in regulated industries will benefit from security and compliance-focused sessions that connect technical implementation to audit and governance requirements.
Technology Partner Ecosystem
The sponsor and partner presence extends the event’s scope beyond Red Hat’s own portfolio. Intel and Nvidia bring hardware acceleration perspectives essential for AI workloads. Cisco and IBM contribute enterprise networking and integration expertise. Veeam and Portworx by Pure Storage address data protection and storage requirements for containerised environments. Percona offers open source database expertise, while TD Synnex and Level Up Technology represent the channel and services ecosystem that supports enterprise deployments.
This breadth reflects the reality that enterprise IT transformation requires coordinated capabilities across multiple vendors. The event provides opportunities to explore how these technologies integrate, helping attendees evaluate solutions in context rather than isolation.