Red Hat Integrates IT Automation for Hybrid Cloud With Microsoft Azure

RALEIGH, N.C. — The open-source software maker Red Hat is integrating its IT automation software for Microsoft Azure. 

The Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform on Microsoft Azure builds on Red Hat’s standard for hybrid cloud automation and brings it more deeply into the application development lifecycle, according to Red Hat last month.

The collaboration between Red Hat and Microsoft is intended to provide customers flexibility in how they adopt automation and scale in hybrid clouds and at the edge to “deliver any application anywhere,” without additional overhead or complexity.

Users can work on scenarios such as automated OS configuration, application provisioning, network automation, infrastructure-as-code (IaC), and cybersecurity orchestration.

The integration with Azure services, including Azure compute, network, and storage, can allow customers to scale their IT operations.

Virtually all organizations (97%) see major barriers to their ability to effectively employ automation across their enterprise, according to IDC. Through 2023, many IT automation efforts will be delayed or fail outright due to under-investment in creating IT/Sec/DevOps teams with the right tools and skills. 

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform on Azure is designed to remove the infrastructure maintenance and operational burden from IT teams, enabling them to focus on delivering automation strategies for a more efficient business.

Users can sign up online for a private preview of the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform on Azure.

“We believe that this is the decade of automation,” said Joe Fitzgerald, VP and GM of the Ansible business unit at Red Hat.

“Just like in other domains, from manufacturing to logistics, automation is the one technology that enables the operational scalability necessary to build and operate at hybrid cloud scale.

“Customers around the globe are realizing this and are exploring many different options. But the automation needs of any organization go well beyond simply creating and destroying workloads or infrastructure. If you are in any operation team focused on continuous IT governance, automated infrastructure provisioning alone will not be enough.”

By integrating open-source automation technologies, such as Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, Microsoft Azure customers can “better automate at scale, evolve current practices, and implement a culture of automation to meet future business needs,” said Erin Chapple, corporate VP, Azure core products and design, Microsoft.