Red Hat and Telenor have announced a strategic collaboration to power the Telenor AI Factory, an infrastructure solution that would enable enterprises to develop, train, and deploy production-grade artificial intelligence while maintaining control and sovereignty over critical data assets. The solution was announced at MWC Barcelona and would combine Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud and AI solutions with high-performance infrastructure from NVIDIA to deliver a solution that would enable enterprises to develop AI solutions while maintaining control over critical data assets. The solution is built on Red Hat OpenShift AI and would address the increasing demands of enterprises regarding data residency and digital sovereignty by enabling enterprises to process critical data within regional boundaries while leveraging the power of AI solutions. The solution would offer a highly optimized architecture with NVIDIA GPU accelerators, high-performance networking, and high-performance storage solutions to enable enterprises to develop AI solutions while addressing the demands of large-scale AI workloads. The solution would enable enterprises to develop AI solutions while leveraging the power of cloud-native solutions by integrating Red Hat OpenShift AI with Red Hat OpenShift Platform Plus and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Red Hat Consulting has also collaborated with Telenor to help create a data architecture that is capable of supporting AI services for a number of different customers through multi-tenant capabilities while maintaining data governance and data sovereignty controls. The collaboration is aimed at simplifying the path to production for AI through a range of capabilities that are aimed at giving organizations the flexibility to run their AI workloads on their preferred hardware, frameworks, and tools, thus optimizing GPU usage and scaling their demanding workloads in a cost-effective way. The data infrastructure is hosted within two data center locations in Norway on renewable energy sources and is already serving a number of multi-tenant customers within the Telenor group as well as external organizations handling sensitive workloads within the public sector and private sectors. By standardizing on Red Hat technologies, the AI factory creates a vendor-neutral technology layer that abstracts hardware complexity and enables portability, transparency and auditability through open-source software principles. According to the companies, the platform also allows IT teams to manage traditional enterprise applications alongside AI workloads within a unified environment, reducing operational silos while increasing agility and cost efficiency.
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“Telenor AI Factory is leading the way in rolling out sovereign cloud for the enterprise and Red Hat is excited to bring our experience of open innovation and flexible platforms to support delivery of these diverse and complex services. With the pace of change in the AI market, Red Hat and Telenor AI Factory are catering for today’s greatest strategic need: The freedom to choose any model, on any accelerator, across any environment. Together we are delivering support for sovereignty, governance and enhanced systems security so that customers can scale AI efforts to drive value, with control and autonomy over data.” said Rich Stephens, vice president, EMEA Telecommunications, Red Hat. “Telenor is focused on delivering dependable technologies for organizations looking to enhance operational resilience and drive AI-powered innovation. Telenor AI Factory and Red Hat collaborate as one team – we get in rooms together to jointly problem-solve and push forward. We are building Telenor AI Factory for flexibility and portability, no lock-in, and Red Hat is a key part of this with its open software and principles. With Red Hat as the common cloud layer, Telenor AI Factory provides purpose-built, security-focused environments that reduce deployment complexity while optimizing costs so that our customers can build on what already works and own what they create. Red Hat and Telenor AI Factory are transforming isolated GPU silos into a flexible and compliant offering ready for the demands of the Nordic and wider European market.” said Kaaren Hilsen, CEO, Telenor AI Factory. The collaboration highlights how telecom providers and cloud technology vendors are increasingly working together to deliver sovereign AI infrastructure capable of supporting enterprise innovation while meeting strict regulatory requirements across Europe and beyond.