Red Hat introduced image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a fresh deployment method. This innovation delivers the platform as a container image, providing a single, container-native workflow that can efficiently manage an entire IT landscape, from the applications to the underpinning operating system.

Traditionally, a standard operating environment (SOE) or 'gold image' based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux forms the core of many organisation's technology strategies. These images power the hybrid cloud from the datacentre, public clouds, and to the edge, often requiring bespoke modification to meet unique business and environmental needs. This container-native approach to building, deploying, and managing the operating system is set to make these processes more efficient.

Forecasts by Gartner suggest that by 2027, half of enterprise workloads will exist independently of centralised public cloud locations. This growing move toward hybrid cloud computing, coupled with a marked increase in AI workloads that necessitate greater speed and flexibility, demands adaptive, scalable, and responsive operating systems. Red Hat's image mode strikes at the heart of the issue, bringing the innovations underpinning modern application development practices, particularly containers, to the core of the operating system.

Building upon the success of open source projects like 'bootc', image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux fits smoothly into container-native workflows. It allows the operating system to use the same tools, skills, and patterns as containerized applications, aiding operations and infrastructure teams in adopting the same language as developers.

Gunnar Hellekson, vice president and general manager of Red Hat Enterprise Linux at Red Hat, voiced the importance of this advancement: "The era of the AI-defined organisation requires us to reassess all technologies across the enterprise, not just those directly impacted by intelligent applications and workloads. By delivering the world's leading enterprise Linux platform in a container format, we're providing an operating system that can match the speed, efficiency and innovation of the AI era, backed by the consistency and trust that CIOs have come to expect from Red Hat Enterprise Linux."

Every organisation is charting a future around AI workloads or applications infused with some level of AI capabilities. Image mode for Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports this rapidly moving field of development, both due to its flexible nature and its tight integration with Podman AI Lab. Developers can considerably simplify AI application development using Podman AI Lab on their laptops. With the bootc extension for Podman Desktop, they can then conveniently convert to containers, bootable images or even bare-metal installers, all running on the solid, trusted and consistent backbone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Offering additional management features for image mode's immutability, Red Hat Insights now allows operations teams to visualise the deployment of operating system images across their infrastructure. This will be a major boon, while administrators can update image mode systems directly from Red Hat Insights. In the future, image maintainers will be better able to harden their images, thereby increasing security at this increasingly important intersection of AI-based application development and deployment.