Conference Description
Key Takeaways
- Red Hat Summit: Connect 2026 Lima focuses on enterprise AI adoption with an emphasis on data sovereignty and organisational flexibility
- The conference addresses hybrid cloud modernisation, automation, and security challenges facing mid-to-large enterprises
- Target industries include finance, healthcare, automotive, telecommunications, public sector, and media
- Featured technologies include Red Hat AI, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
- The programme combines keynotes, AI-focused panels, customer case studies, product demonstrations, and expert consultations
Introduction
Red Hat Summit: Connect 2026 Lima brings together IT leaders, technical specialists, and enterprise decision-makers to examine how organisations can implement artificial intelligence while maintaining control over their data and infrastructure choices. Taking place at the Sheraton Lima Hotel & Convention Center, the conference arrives at a moment when enterprises across Latin America face mounting pressure to adopt AI capabilities without sacrificing sovereignty over their technological direction. The event positions open source technology as a pathway for organisations seeking to modernise their IT environments while avoiding vendor lock-in and maintaining compliance with evolving data governance requirements.
About Red Hat Summit: Connect 2026 Lima
This regional instalment of Red Hat’s global Summit: Connect series serves as a gathering point for the Latin American enterprise technology community. The in-person format facilitates direct engagement between attendees and Red Hat’s technical specialists, creating opportunities for hands-on exploration of the company’s product portfolio. Customer impact case studies form a significant component of the programme, offering concrete examples of how organisations have applied open source solutions to address specific operational challenges.
The conference structure balances strategic content with practical technical depth. Keynote sessions establish broader themes around AI adoption and digital transformation, while dedicated panels examine implementation considerations in greater detail. Product demonstrations provide attendees with direct exposure to Red Hat AI, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift, and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, allowing technical teams to evaluate capabilities against their specific requirements.
Data Sovereignty and the AI Adoption Challenge
The concept of data sovereignty has become increasingly central to enterprise technology strategy as organisations grapple with where their data resides, who can access it, and which regulatory frameworks apply. For enterprises operating across multiple jurisdictions or in heavily regulated industries, these considerations directly influence architectural decisions around AI deployment. The conference addresses this intersection, examining how open source approaches can provide organisations with greater transparency and control compared to proprietary alternatives.
Sovereign AI—the ability to develop and deploy artificial intelligence capabilities while maintaining full control over data, models, and infrastructure—represents a growing priority for enterprises concerned about dependency on external providers. This concern extends beyond data privacy to encompass questions of operational continuity, competitive differentiation, and the ability to customise AI systems for specific business contexts. Red Hat’s positioning around flexibility and choice speaks directly to these enterprise requirements.
Hybrid Cloud and Infrastructure Modernisation
Enterprise IT environments rarely exist as monolithic structures. Most organisations operate across a combination of on-premises data centres, private cloud deployments, and public cloud services, creating hybrid architectures that must be managed cohesively. Red Hat OpenShift serves as a container orchestration platform designed to provide consistency across these diverse environments, enabling organisations to deploy applications wherever business requirements dictate without rebuilding for each target infrastructure.
The modernisation imperative extends beyond infrastructure to encompass application development practices. Containerisation, microservices architectures, and DevOps methodologies have become standard approaches for organisations seeking to accelerate software delivery while improving reliability. These practices depend on underlying platforms that can support rapid iteration without compromising security or operational stability. The conference programme addresses how enterprises can evolve their development and deployment practices alongside infrastructure modernisation efforts.
Automation as an Operational Foundation
As IT environments grow in complexity, manual management approaches become increasingly untenable. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform represents the company’s approach to infrastructure automation, providing tools for configuration management, application deployment, and orchestration across hybrid environments. The platform’s agentless architecture and human-readable automation language have contributed to its adoption across enterprises seeking to reduce operational overhead while improving consistency.
Automation intersects with AI adoption in several ways. Machine learning workloads often require sophisticated infrastructure provisioning and management, making automation capabilities essential for organisations scaling AI initiatives. Conversely, AI technologies are increasingly being applied to automation itself, enabling more intelligent decision-making within operational workflows. The conference explores these interconnections, examining how automation and AI can reinforce each other within enterprise environments.
Security Considerations in Open Source Environments
Security remains a persistent concern for enterprises evaluating open source technologies. While open source development models offer transparency advantages—allowing organisations to inspect code and understand exactly what runs in their environments—they also require robust processes for vulnerability management, patch deployment, and supply chain security. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a commercially supported distribution that addresses these requirements through extended lifecycle support, security certifications, and integrated vulnerability scanning capabilities.
The security discussion extends to AI-specific considerations. Model integrity, training data provenance, and inference security represent emerging concerns as organisations deploy AI systems in production environments. Enterprises must consider not only traditional infrastructure security but also the unique attack surfaces that machine learning systems introduce.
Who Should Attend
The conference programme addresses multiple organisational roles with distinct perspectives on technology adoption. IT leaders and decision-makers will find strategic content examining how open source and AI investments align with broader business objectives. Technical specialists, including developers, architects, and system administrators, can engage with detailed implementation guidance and hands-on product experiences. Innovation managers responsible for identifying and evaluating emerging technologies will benefit from exposure to customer case studies demonstrating real-world applications.
Industry representation spans finance, healthcare, automotive, telecommunications, public sector, and media—sectors where digital transformation pressures are particularly acute and where regulatory considerations often complicate technology decisions. Mid-to-large enterprises with established IT operations and active modernisation initiatives represent the primary audience, though organisations earlier in their transformation journeys may find value in understanding available approaches and implementation patterns.
The Open Source Approach to Enterprise AI
Open source has evolved from a cost-reduction strategy to a fundamental approach for enterprise technology adoption. The collaborative development model accelerates innovation while reducing dependency on individual vendors. For AI specifically, open source frameworks and models provide organisations with alternatives to proprietary systems, enabling customisation and avoiding situations where critical business capabilities depend entirely on external providers.
Red Hat’s role in the open source ecosystem extends beyond product development to community stewardship and enterprise support. The company’s business model—providing commercially supported distributions of open source technologies—addresses enterprise requirements for stability, security, and accountability while preserving the flexibility that open source enables. This positioning becomes particularly relevant as organisations evaluate AI platforms, where the pace of innovation and the strategic importance of capabilities make vendor selection decisions consequential.
Red Hat Summit: Connect 2026 Lima offers Latin American enterprises an opportunity to engage directly with these technologies and the experts who develop and support them, providing a foundation for informed decision-making as organisations navigate the complexities of AI adoption and infrastructure modernisation.