A new digital capability, based on generative artificial intelligence, was announced for general availability at Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed last week. The personal assistant solution promises to significantly transform how users interact with and manage their hybrid cloud application platform deployments. The tool ensures that users are more accurate in their technical tasks, even without extensive expertise in the field, while freeing up more experienced professionals to focus on innovation.
Delivering applications faster is essential for organizations across all industries looking to improve the customer experience. However, many struggle to keep up with the growing complexity of IT, compounded by a technical skills gap. According to IDC, by 2026, more than 90% of organizations worldwide will suffer from an IT talent crisis, resulting in losses of approximately US$5.5 trillion due to product delays, lack of competitiveness, and lost business opportunities.
Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed directly addresses this skills gap by offering generative AI capabilities specific to the OpenShift environment, integrated directly into the console. New users of the platform can more easily acquire the skills needed to manage their applications, while experienced users can more quickly scale their knowledge to support production operations.
Enhanced productivity with personalized experience
Recognizing the complexity of modern IT, Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed acts as an intelligent guide, offering proactive, personalized assistance, one step at a time, directly in the web console. The platform enables IT teams, regardless of experience level, to navigate complex application environments with greater confidence and efficiency.
Using natural language, users can ask Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed questions about Red Hat OpenShift. This empowers users to troubleshoot and investigate cluster resources. Additionally, professionals can share environment information via chat, allowing the solution to answer questions using real-world context.
Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed offers flexible integration with a variety of AI model providers, including a number of leading services available through models like OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and WatsonX. Private AI options hosted on Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI and Red Hat OpenShift AI are also available, offering greater control and customization across IT environments. This compatibility ensures organizations can choose the AI models best suited to their needs and security requirements.
Additionally, with the functionality of interaction with clustersAvailable as a technology preview, the solution can directly access the context of an organization’s clusters, providing faster and more accurate answers. Instead of generic guidance, Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed can answer detailed questions about specific environments.
To enable organizations to customize Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed to their unique development process, the “Bring Your Own Knowledge“BYO Knowledge” is also available as a technology preview. It allows organizations to incorporate their own organizational knowledge and process documentation into the Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed system, reinforcing Red Hat’s commitment to adaptable solutions that deliver personalized solutions tailored to each organization’s processes and practices, as well as their approach to using the platform.
Modern virtualization, simplified
Hybrid cloud environments increasingly combine modern containerized applications with traditional workloads in a virtual environment. Red Hat OpenShift provides a crucial unified platform for managing these diverse environments. Extending this approach, Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed delivers intelligent support specifically tailored to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
This capability not only simplifies the often complex process of migrating from legacy virtualization vendors, but also facilitates modernization by providing accessible answers to specific virtualization questions. Now, organizations can integrate and manage virtual machines alongside containers with greater confidence, with Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed guidance ranging from VM migration to networking and storage, accelerating their journey to a more agile, future-proof infrastructure.
Availability
Red Hat OpenShift Lightspeed will be generally available in June 2025.
Red Hat Summit
Join Red Hat Summit keynotes to hear the latest from Red Hat executives, customers, and partners:
- Modern infrastructure aligned with enterprise AI —Tuesday, May 20, 8:00 AM – 10:00 AM EDT (YouTube)
- Hybrid cloud evolves to drive business innovation — Wednesday, May 21, 8:00-9:30 a.m. EDT (YouTube)
