Red Hat at Cisco Live EMEA 2025

TUESDAY, 11 FEBRUARY SESSION

Title: OpenShift and Hypershield: Revolutionizing Unified Security Controls for VM and Container Protection

Abstract: Red Hat and Cisco have partnered to integrate OpenShift with Cisco Hypershield, revolutionizing security for containerized and traditional workloads in hybrid cloud environments. This integration streamlines the transition from legacy VM platforms to modern, cloud-ready applications. This 90-minute session will highlight the challenges of siloed orchestration commonly used for VMs and containers, then explore how the OpenShift+Hypershield integration transforms security controls and visibility across these traditionally separate domains.

Key topics include:

• Unified security fabric across containerized and traditional workloads
• AI-powered protection with auto-segmentation and distributed exploit prevention
• Dual data plane innovation for live policy validation
• Kubernetes-native security orchestration

Ideal for OpenShift administrators, security professionals, cloud architects, and IT leaders, this session will demonstrate how the OpenShift+Hypershield integration sets new benchmarks in hybrid cloud security, operational efficiency, and workload protection. Attendees will gain practical insights into implementing this solution in diverse hybrid cloud environments.

Time and Date: Tuesday, 11 February | 16:30 - 18:00 CET

Speakers: Michael Hrivnak, Sr. Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat; Matt Corell, Engineering Product Manager, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Location: TBD

Title: Accelerating modernization together in the AI era

Abstract: Many organizations are looking to embed intelligence into their applications to help realize a variety of business benefits including improving customer and employee experience, increasing competitive advantage, and increasing the quality of products and services.

Red Hat and Cisco Systems together address the challenges faced by IT operations, network engineering, and application developers as organizations seek to accelerate infrastructure modernization to adopt emerging cloud native applications such as AI, while continuing support for virtual machines. With automation as a critical enabler, organizations can establish a strong foundation for AI and other new initiatives by facilitating standardized deployment, scalability, configuration management, and monitoring integration to improve performance, reliability and resilience.

Join this session to learn how Red Hat and Cisco can help you modernize, automate and prepare for AI innovation in today’s rapidly changing IT landscape.

Time and Date: Wednesday, 12 February | 13:25 - 13:35 CET

Location: Speaker's Corner | World of Solutions 

Title: Meraki and Ansible: A Collaboration Made in the Cloud

Abstract: In today's fast-paced digital landscape, businesses are continually striving to maximize their IT efficiency and agility. We are excited to unveil the latest fruit of the innovative cooperation between Cisco-Meraki and Red Hat - the new Ansible collection designed exclusively for Meraki's cutting-edge networking solutions. This collaboration promises to redefine network management by leveraging the powerful capabilities of Ansible automation platform in conjunction with Meraki's cloud-managed architecture. During this engaging session, participants will embark on a journey through the seamless integration of Ansible with Cisco-Meraki, enabling businesses to achieve unparalleled automation capabilities. Discover how this combined force empowers network administrators, IT teams, and DevOps professionals to simplify complex network configurations and operations while unleashing their full potential for innovation and business growth.

Time and Date: Thursday, 13 February | 15:30 - 16:15 CET

Speakers: Steven Fulmer, Principal Product Manager, Ansible Business Unit Automation, Red Hat; Vasundhra Dewangan, Product Manager, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Location: DevNet Theater | World of Solutions

Title: Enhancing Day 2 Operations with Cisco Compute and Ansible Automation

Abstract: Join us for an insightful technical session as part of the Cisco Validated Design program, focusing on optimizing Day 2 operations using Cisco Compute Solutions for Converged Infrastructure and Red Hat's Ansible Automation Platform. This session is tailored for IT professionals looking to streamline their infrastructure management through automation. We will explore advanced capabilities for network configuration, storage integration, and virtualization enhancements, showcasing how to achieve minimal disruption and maximum operational efficiency. Our expert speakers will provide a comprehensive overview of best practices and innovative solutions that empower you to handle operational complexities with ease and confidence. Don't miss this opportunity to enhance your skills and leverage validated designs to optimize your IT environment.

Time and Date: Thursday, 13 February | 16:30 - 17:15 

Speakers: Massimo Ferrari, Senior Manager of Global Product Management, Ansible Business Unit Automation, Red Hat; Chris O'Brien, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Location: DevNet Theater | World of Solutions

Title: Transition to a new hypervisor & build AI infrastructures simultaneously with Red Hat OpenShift and Cisco UCS

Abstract: Three big disruptions in our IT sector are all coming together;

1. Application modernization by containerization

2. Finding VMware alternatives

3. Building AI infrastructure.

Red Hat OpenShift is the platform of the future that runs all virtualized, containerized and AI workloads!

Now is the time to learn about OpenShift and the best server platform in the world to run it on, Cisco UCS with Intersight.

This session is delivered by Red Hat and Cisco together and demonstrates how to deploy and operate OpenShift Container Platform with unique integrations between Red Hat and Cisco. We focus on the technical capabilities from both platforms that will simplify your daily operations and help you deploy a secure and future proof compute platform to run your existing virtualized workloads. This session is specifically built for VMware admins to learn about OpenShift Virtualization but will prepare you for running containerized and AI workloads in the future.

Time and Date: Thursday, 13 February | 14:00 - 15:00 CET

Speakers: Michael Hrivnak, Sr. Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat; Boris Aelen, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Location: TBD

Title: Hybrid Cloud Networking using Cisco XRd

Abstract: Learn to implement your transport network and routing in a hybrid cloud. In this lab, Cisco's time-hardened, industry-recognized routing operating system, IOS XR, joins forces with Red Hat's OpenShift, a widely deployed Kubernetes distro. The lab will walk you through the steps to deploy an end-to-end network across public (AWS) and private cloud environments using Cisco XRd, a containerized implementation of IOS XR.

In this lab, the attendees will do the following:

• Tune the horizontal cloud platform to host XRd
• Deploy XRd instances across private and public clouds
• Use Cisco NSO hosted in the public cloud to orchestrate XRd for a zero-touch deployment
• Create a virtual routing infrastructure across clouds and use a public cloud-hosted controller to influence traffic paths across hybrid clouds
• Verify path selection and metrics for XRd application and underlying cloud platforms

Knowledge of AWS and Kubernetes is not required for this lab.

Time and Date: Friday, 14 February | 9:30 - 13:30 CET 

Speakers: Raja Kolagatla, Engineering Product Manager, Cisco Systems, Inc.; Taran Deshpande, Technical Marketing Engineer, Cisco Systems, Inc.

Location: TBD