Darmstadt – October 29, 2026 -- Only 30% of German companies have governance structures suited to agentic AI, according to figures cited by Gregor von Jagow, Senior Director and Country Manager Germany at Red Hat. He argues that open technology, not new vendor dependencies, is the route out of the pilot phase.
Von Jagow says building AI agents is no longer the main hurdle. The challenge is deploying them productively: integrating them reliably into existing business processes, limiting their access to defined areas and meeting security requirements.
Missing exit strategies restrict service access at 57% of firms
Many companies struggle to move agents beyond pilot projects. Scaling requires clear access rights, defined responsibilities and the ability to prevent unwanted agent behavior. The cited data also shows that 57% of companies face restricted access to some services because they lack an exit strategy for switching providers.
Von Jagow says scaling agents means controlling dependencies, data flows and accountability, not just choosing models.
Red Hat pitches open source and hybrid cloud as the flexibility layer
Red Hat backs open source so companies can combine different models, platforms and infrastructures and adapt them to technical, economic or regulatory requirements. A hybrid-cloud approach lets workloads run wherever that is most practical on those criteria. Automation keeps production operations manageable as the number of AI applications grows, without forcing companies to build every component themselves.
Red Hat and IBM Lightwell backport security fixes to older software versions
Von Jagow rejects the idea that openness and security conflict. He says the open-source model allows faster identification and joint remediation of vulnerabilities, drawing on a broad developer community.
Red Hat is working with IBM Lightwell to close vulnerabilities in deployed software versions and to make fixes available for older releases. Companies can reduce security risk without fully updating their existing software stacks.
Red Hat will address how these approaches work in practice, and the role of open technology in agentic AI, at Red Hat Summit: Connect 2026 in Darmstadt.