Conference Description
Key Takeaways
- Enterprise IT conference focused on open source, hybrid cloud, automation, and artificial intelligence
- Designed for IT decision-makers, architects, developers, DevOps professionals, and business leaders
- Covers Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, and Red Hat AI solutions
- Addresses digital transformation, cloud migration, application modernisation, and security challenges
- Industry tracks spanning automotive, financial services, healthcare, public sector, and telecommunications
- In-person event in Utrecht, Netherlands, on 11 November 2026
Introduction
Red Hat Summit: Connect 2026 Utrecht brings together IT professionals and business leaders to examine the evolving landscape of enterprise open source technology. The conference addresses how organisations can leverage hybrid cloud infrastructure, automation platforms, and artificial intelligence to accelerate digital transformation initiatives. With European enterprises facing mounting pressure to modernise legacy systems while maintaining security and regulatory compliance, the event arrives at a moment when practical guidance on these technologies carries particular relevance.
The programme combines keynote presentations, interactive breakout sessions, discussion panels, and live product demonstrations. This format reflects a broader shift in enterprise technology events toward hands-on learning experiences rather than purely theoretical presentations, recognising that IT teams increasingly need to evaluate technologies in practical contexts before committing to implementation.
About This Event
Red Hat Summit: Connect represents the regional extension of Red Hat’s flagship annual conference, bringing the company’s ecosystem of technologies, partners, and expertise to European audiences. The Utrecht edition takes place at NBC Nieuwegein on 11 November 2026, offering a single-day immersion in the Red Hat technology portfolio and its applications across enterprise environments.
The event structure balances strategic content for business leaders with technical depth for practitioners. Keynotes establish broader themes around open source adoption and digital transformation, while breakout sessions allow attendees to explore specific technologies and use cases in greater detail. Networking sessions provide opportunities for peer exchange, enabling IT professionals to share implementation experiences and lessons learned from their own transformation projects.
Hybrid Cloud and Infrastructure Modernisation
A central theme of the conference is hybrid cloud infrastructure, reflecting the reality that most enterprises operate across multiple environments rather than committing exclusively to public cloud or on-premises deployments. Red Hat OpenShift serves as the primary platform for container orchestration and Kubernetes management in this context, providing a consistent application platform regardless of where workloads run.
The hybrid approach addresses several practical concerns that have emerged as organisations mature in their cloud strategies. Data residency requirements, latency-sensitive applications, and existing infrastructure investments all influence where workloads should reside. Rather than forcing a binary choice, hybrid cloud architectures allow organisations to place workloads where they make the most operational and economic sense while maintaining unified management and security policies.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux underpins much of this infrastructure, providing a stable and certified foundation for both traditional and containerised workloads. The operating system’s role extends beyond simply running applications; it establishes security baselines, enables compliance automation, and provides the consistency that operations teams require when managing diverse environments.
Automation and Operational Efficiency
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform features prominently in the conference programme, addressing the operational challenges that accompany infrastructure growth and complexity. As organisations expand their hybrid cloud footprints, manual configuration and management become increasingly unsustainable. Automation provides the mechanism for maintaining consistency, reducing human error, and enabling IT teams to manage larger environments without proportional increases in staffing.
The automation discussion extends beyond simple task execution to encompass broader operational patterns. Infrastructure as code practices, event-driven automation, and self-service provisioning all represent ways that organisations can reduce operational friction while improving governance. These approaches prove particularly valuable in environments where development teams expect rapid infrastructure provisioning but security and compliance requirements demand consistent controls.
Security automation receives specific attention, recognising that vulnerability remediation and compliance verification cannot scale through manual processes alone. Automated patching, configuration drift detection, and compliance reporting help organisations maintain security postures across large and distributed environments.
Artificial Intelligence in Enterprise Contexts
The conference addresses artificial intelligence from an infrastructure and operational perspective, examining how organisations can build and deploy AI workloads within their existing technology environments. Red Hat AI solutions focus on providing the platform capabilities that AI development and deployment require, including container orchestration for model training, GPU resource management, and integration with data pipelines.
This infrastructure-centric approach to AI reflects the practical challenges that enterprises face when moving beyond experimentation to production deployment. Data scientists may develop models in isolated environments, but operationalising those models requires integration with existing systems, security controls, and operational processes. The conference explores how organisations can bridge this gap while maintaining the governance and reliability standards that enterprise applications demand.
Edge Computing and Digital Sovereignty
Edge computing and digital sovereignty emerge as interconnected themes within the programme. Edge deployments push computing resources closer to where data is generated and consumed, reducing latency and enabling use cases that centralised cloud architectures cannot adequately serve. Manufacturing floors, retail locations, telecommunications infrastructure, and healthcare facilities all present scenarios where edge computing delivers tangible operational benefits.
Digital sovereignty concerns have gained prominence among European organisations, driven by regulatory requirements and strategic considerations around data control. The ability to run workloads on infrastructure within specific jurisdictions, using software with transparent and auditable codebases, addresses these concerns in ways that proprietary alternatives may not. Open source technologies provide visibility into how software operates, supporting the trust and verification requirements that sovereignty initiatives demand.
Industry-Specific Applications
The conference includes content tailored to specific industry verticals, recognising that technology adoption patterns and requirements vary significantly across sectors. Automotive organisations face distinct challenges around connected vehicle platforms and manufacturing automation. Financial services institutions operate under stringent regulatory frameworks that shape their technology choices. Healthcare organisations must balance innovation with patient data protection requirements. Public sector entities navigate procurement regulations and citizen service expectations.
Telecommunications providers represent a particularly significant audience, given the infrastructure transformation that 5G deployments and network virtualisation initiatives require. These organisations are rebuilding network infrastructure using cloud-native principles, creating demand for platforms that can operate at the scale and reliability levels that telecommunications services require.
Technology Partner Ecosystem
The event brings together an extensive partner ecosystem, with Intel serving as lead sponsor alongside diamond sponsors Dell and ITQ. Additional sponsors include Conclusion, HashiCorp, HCS, Kangaroot, Microsoft, Devoteam, EDB, Veeam, AWS, Ilionix, Portworx by Pure Storage, and Vijfhart Opleidingen. This partner presence reflects the collaborative nature of enterprise technology deployments, where solutions typically combine components from multiple vendors.
The diversity of sponsors spans hardware manufacturers, cloud providers, software vendors, and systems integrators, illustrating the breadth of expertise required to deliver successful enterprise technology initiatives. Attendees can engage with these partners to explore how different components integrate and to evaluate solutions for their specific requirements.
Who Should Attend
The conference serves IT decision-makers and practitioners from medium to large enterprises and public sector organisations. Technical roles including cloud architects, DevOps engineers, system administrators, and security specialists will find relevant content addressing implementation and operational concerns. Business and technology leaders such as CIOs, CTOs, and IT managers can engage with strategic content around digital transformation and technology investment priorities.
Organisations currently evaluating hybrid cloud strategies, planning automation initiatives, or exploring AI deployment options will find particular value in the programme. The combination of vendor presentations, peer networking, and hands-on demonstrations provides multiple perspectives on how these technologies perform in real-world enterprise environments.