Industry analysts predict AI infrastructure investment will reach $758 billion by 2029. But the organisations capturing lasting value are not the ones who bet everything on a single vendor’s vision. They’ve built flexibility into the foundation. Model architectures change in months. Regulatory requirements tighten. Business priorities shift. Most infrastructure decisions are locked in for three to five years.

Together, Red Hat and Softcat are helping UK enterprises answer the platform question with confidence. Red Hat provides an open, enterprise-grade AI platform. Softcat provides the expertise, implementation, and ongoing support to make it work in your environment.

A platform built around your choices

Red Hat AI is an enterprise platform designed around a simple principle: your AI strategy should drive your infrastructure decisions, not the other way around. That means genuine flexibility across the areas where organisations need it most.

• Model choice. Red Hat AI gives you access to validated open models, including Granite, Llama, and Mistral. All are optimised and tested for production deployment. You are not locked into a single model provider.
• Efficient inference. Running AI in production is expensive. Red Hat AI reduces that cost through vLLM, a high-performance inference runtime that maximises GPU utilisation. llm-d provides distributed inference for scalable request routing. LLM Compressor reduces compute requirements by compressing models without sacrificing accuracy.
• Connecting models to your data. A model trained on public data alone will not deliver the domain-specific accuracy your business needs. SDG Hub supports synthetic data generation (SDG). Training Hub provides model-tuning libraries. Retrieval Augmented Generation keeps outputs grounded in current enterprise knowledge.
• Agentic AI. The next frontier is autonomous, multi-step workflows where AI agents act, not just answer questions.

Why open matters for enterprise AI

Proprietary AI stacks optimise for their vendor's priorities, not yours. They abstract away the components you need to control most, and they make switching costly. Open standards give you visibility into what your models are doing, the freedom to move between providers, and sovereignty over your data.

Red Hat AI is built on open-source technologies and open standards, including an OpenAI-compatible API layer. Your developers use familiar tools. Your organisation retains control over models, data, and infrastructure. Optimised and benchmarked versions of leading open models are available via the Red Hat AI repository on Hugging Face.

The practical pressures making this decision urgent

GPU supply constraints remain real. Top-tier accelerators are limited, and cloud providers prioritise their largest customers. Red Hat AI’s support for NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel accelerators means your platform is not dependent on a single hardware supplier. Nearly a third of AI teams now use non-NVIDIA hardware.

Regulatory and sovereignty requirements are tightening. UK GDPR, the EU AI Act, and sector-specific rules govern where data is processed and how AI decisions are overseen. Red Hat AI supports on-premises, air-gapped, and hybrid deployments. Cloud-based AI APIs also create cost unpredictability at scale. Running inference on infrastructure you control provides cost visibility.

How Softcat helps you make it real

As a Red Hat Advanced Partner with certified architects and engineers across the OpenShift portfolio. Softcat has the technical depth to deliver Red Hat AI deployments that fit your specific environment. Our approach starts with your current estate: where are your AI workloads today, what are your data sovereignty requirements, and where are the gaps?

For UK organisations, this matters. Softcat understands the compliance landscape for NHS, financial services, and public sector organisations. We design Red Hat AI deployments that meet data residency requirements, integrate with existing infrastructure, and scale as your AI programme grows. Our skills transfer approach means your teams can own and evolve the environment.

Your AI strategy will change. Your platform should keep up.

The organisations that gain competitive ground in AI will not necessarily be the ones that moved fastest. They will be the ones who made adaptable decisions. Red Hat AI, deployed and supported by Softcat, gives you that foundation. Open standards protect your investment. Model choice preserves your options. Efficient inference controls your costs.

Whether you are approaching an infrastructure refresh, evaluating alternatives to your current AI stack, or planning your first production deployment, Softcat, and Red Hat are ready to help. Find out more about our partnership, and how we can support your organisation here.

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