Red Hat has announced automated policy as code, a new capability coming to future versions of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. The capability will help enforce policies and compliance across hybrid cloud estates that increasingly include a varied and growing number of AI applications. Another step in automation maturity, policy as code will make it possible to adhere to changing internal or external requirements and better prepare for sprawling infrastructure in support of scaling AI workloads.

Sathish Balakrishnan, vice president and general manager, Ansible, Red Hat, said: “Automation is a critical component of enterprise IT and AI is a natural progression of automation. It has become clear that AI will be the most transformative technology in our lifetimes. The race to adopt and scale AI workloads in tandem with hybrid cloud creates more complexity and sprawl. Policy as code helps bring order to this sprawl, both current and potential, by enforcing critical compliance standards as AI generated applications and systems arise, making automation a truly strategic component in AI evolution.”

Laying a foundation of mature automation with operational guardrails enables organizations to prepare a stronger security footprint for AI innovation. Automating policy as code will help customers better position themselves to operate IT in accordance with specific governance, risk and compliance (GRC) requirements. It will help align technical environments and resources to agreed standards whenever — before the automation is executed or live as components become out of policy – and repeat wherever, extending control at scale across the hybrid cloud and keeping potential AI sprawl within predetermined limits.

Ansible Automation Platform delivers a constant stream of innovation to free up IT teams with new features like Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed to bridge skills gaps and Event-Driven Ansible for an always-on tool.

If teams are using an AI service—like Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed—to accelerate automation development, policy as code capabilities could be applied while creating automation content and governance can be infused into the learning model from the start. This will enable content creators to write code that automatically maintains mandated compliance requirements, greatly reducing the impact of skills gaps and human error in IT operations.

The tech preview of automated policy as code for Ansible Automation Platform is slated for availability in the coming months.