Red Hat expands hybrid cloud tools on Oracle Cloud

Red Hat has expanded the availability of its hybrid cloud portfolio on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a first-party offering in the OCI Console.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization are also now available through Oracle Marketplace, where customers can use Oracle Universal Credits for purchases.

The changes broaden how organisations can buy and deploy Red Hat software on Oracle's cloud platform, as companies seek more consistency across on-premises and cloud environments. The first-party listing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is aimed at customers running compute-intensive systems, including machine learning and AI workloads.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux images for OCI are available for Intel and AMD fully virtualised instances. The service also integrates with Oracle monitoring tools, the OCI command-line interface, APIs and the OCI Console.

For customers already using Oracle's commercial model, one practical change is procurement. Customers can draw down Oracle Universal Credits when buying Red Hat Enterprise Linux for OCI or Red Hat subscriptions through Oracle Marketplace. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for OCI is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis per Oracle CPU-hour.

Broader availability

The marketplace rollout expands access to Red Hat's software stack on OCI beyond the operating system. That includes automation tooling through Ansible, a container platform through OpenShift and virtualisation support through OpenShift Virtualization.

The companies also highlighted a series of product certifications and validations intended to demonstrate closer interoperability across their software. Oracle AI Database 26ai is certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, 9 and 10, according to the companies.

Oracle RAC on Database 19c and Oracle AI Database 26ai have also obtained Red Hat validation for on-premises deployment on OpenShift Virtualization. Oracle WebLogic Server has been validated by Red Hat to run on OpenShift Virtualization.

These integrations reflect a broader pattern in the cloud market, as software providers seek to simplify licensing and support across hybrid environments. Large organisations often want to keep older business applications running while introducing container-based software and newer AI workloads, without maintaining separate procurement and management processes for each environment.

In this case, the first-party status of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on OCI means customers can access the software directly in Oracle's cloud console rather than relying only on bring-your-own-subscription options. Existing bring-your-own-subscription routes remain in place.

The service is designed to support more standardised deployment across hybrid infrastructure by using the same operating system in on-premises and OCI environments. OCI customers can also receive front-line support for the first-party Red Hat Enterprise Linux service through Oracle Support.

AI infrastructure

The announcement comes as cloud providers and software vendors compete to position their infrastructure and platforms for AI-related demand. While many of those efforts focus on chips and model services, underlying operating systems, automation software and application platforms remain central to how businesses deploy and manage AI workloads in production.

By making Red Hat Enterprise Linux a native purchase and deployment option in OCI, the two companies are targeting customers that want to standardise the software layer beneath those workloads while preserving flexibility over where applications run.

Kevin Kennedy, Vice President, Global Partner Ecosystem, Red Hat, said the move is tied to customer demand for a more uniform hybrid environment. "Navigating the complexities of the AI era starts by establishing a strong, flexible open hybrid cloud foundation to drive both stability and speed. Through our expanding collaboration with Oracle, Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a first-party offering on OCI and streamlined procurement via Oracle Marketplace, we're empowering our joint customers to standardise on a trusted, AI-optimised platform. This will help our customers modernise with confidence, wherever workloads reside."

Chris Sullivan, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships, Oracle, said customers are looking for simpler ways to manage existing infrastructure while modernising critical systems. "Our customers want to modernise their critical infrastructure with the reliability, security, and flexibility their businesses demand. Together with Red Hat, we're making it simpler to buy and run the platforms their teams already rely on-helping them spend less time managing infrastructure and more time delivering value to their customers."