Organizations are moving to a standardized Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) footprint to simplify operations and better support modern workloads, including AI and cloud-native applications.

IDC defines RHEL standardization as increasing RHEL to at least 50% of total Linux deployments. Companies interviewed cited several practical reasons for doing this:

• Operational simplification: Instead of managing many different Linux distributions, teams can focus on one platform for provisioning, patching, updating, and monitoring.
• Stronger support model: RHEL provides 24x7 enterprise-grade support, a 10-year support life cycle for each major version, and a predictable product roadmap.
• Security and compliance: Built-in capabilities such as live kernel patching and a trusted software supply chain help organizations keep systems secure and compliant.
• Consistency across environments: RHEL offers a consistent experience from core datacenters to public cloud and edge, across x86 and non-x86 architectures (including Arm, IBM Power, IBM Z, and IBM LinuxOne).
• Developer alignment: Developers can write, test, and deploy on the same OS platform used in production, which reduces friction and speeds delivery.

In IDC’s research, organizations also highlighted that standardizing on RHEL improves their ability to support digital modernization and next-generation workloads such as AI and ML, while reducing the complexity and risk that come with a fragmented Linux landscape.

IDC’s Business Value study found that organizations standardizing on RHEL see both financial and operational benefits.

Across the interviewed companies, IDC calculated:

• Average annual benefits: $26 million per organization, or about $3.7 million per 100 VMs.
• Three-year ROI: 313%.

These gains come from several areas:

• IT efficiency and cost control: More efficient IT infrastructure and security teams, lower training costs due to a unified platform, and reduced licensing and maintenance overhead.
• Risk and performance management: Better security posture, improved oversight, and reduced unplanned downtime, which in turn improves mean time to repair (MTTR).
• Application and business impact: More productive developers, more applications delivered per year, and faster go-to-market for customer-facing services. In the study, RHEL environments supported about 63% of total annual company revenue on average.

Organizations reported that time saved by IT and development teams could be redirected to new initiatives, helping them reimagine how they support digital transformation and AI-driven projects.

As AI and cloud adoption accelerate, many IT teams are stretched thin and struggle to support a growing mix of Linux distributions. Standardizing on RHEL, often combined with Red Hat Lightspeed, helps organizations rethink how they manage this complexity.

Support for AI and modern workloads

• RHEL is widely used as a platform for digital modernization and next-generation workloads such as AI and ML.
• It is designed to support computationally intensive AI models and accelerated computing, including hardware acceleration, memory management, and data handling.
• RHEL’s roadmap is described as active in AI and generative AI adoption, adaptability, and security, which helps organizations plan for future requirements.

Security, compliance, and risk management

• RHEL provides “always on” security features such as live kernel patching and a secure software supply chain.
• Standardization improves visibility and control, making it easier to execute timely patching, respond faster to vulnerabilities, and meet security standards.
• Organizations in regulated sectors (financial services, healthcare, telecom, manufacturing) reported better compliance and reduced unplanned downtime after standardizing.

Addressing skills gaps with Red Hat Lightspeed

• Many organizations struggle to hire enough Linux talent to manage diverse distributions. Red Hat Lightspeed is designed to help close this gap.
• Bundled with RHEL, OpenShift, and Ansible Automation Platform, Lightspeed uses predictive and generative AI to monitor system health, optimize security, simplify tasks, and troubleshoot issues.
• It offers analytics and a centralized dashboard across private and public clouds and physical and virtual infrastructure, giving complete visibility into the Linux landscape.
• Lightspeed can identify configuration mismatches and missing security patches, and integrate with Ansible playbooks to streamline automation.
• By acting as an interactive assistant, it helps scale expertise across IT teams, enabling them to innovate while maintaining a reliable enterprise-grade Linux platform.

Together, RHEL standardization and Red Hat Lightspeed help organizations reshape how they run Linux at scale—supporting AI initiatives, strengthening security, and making better use of existing staff skills.