This builds on the open-source software company’s 14-year support commitment for major RHEL releases, a premium package announced in April.
Most enterprise software vendors use end-of-life dates as a “migration forcing function,” noted Shashi Bellamkonda, principal research director at Info-Tech Research Group. But, he said, “Red Hat is reading the room differently. With infrastructure costs up, and IT teams stretched, telling a CIO ‘you can stay put indefinitely with full support’ is a genuine competitive differentiator, not just a pricing play.”
Supporting ‘multi-decade paths’
For a variety of reasons, some customers cannot or aren’t ready to upgrade or migrate to another platform, Gunnar Hellekson, VP and GM for the RHEL business unit, said in a virtual briefing. With the RHEL Long-Life Add-On, though, they can “safely stay in place” while retaining required consistency and autonomy, and managing risk and compliance.
The service extends infrastructure support beyond 14 years to provide a “multi-decade path” for specialized workflows operating on infrastructure that must remain stable and supported “far beyond standard or even extended software lifecycles,” Red Hat said. For instance, in telecom, healthcare, and aerospace, hardware and regulatory lifecycles can span decades.
