Open Source Architecture To Create a Scalable Enterprise

RALEIGH, NC—September 23, 2003—Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq:RHAT), the world's premier open source software provider, today announced a long-term statement of direction to create a comprehensive and flexible enterprise architecture driven by open source technology. Drawing from community planning, technology round-tables, and customer meetings, Red Hat's Open Source Architecture will provide value to the customer through a completely standards-based open source infrastructure with a focus on management and broad applications support across multiple hardware environments.

Enterprise customers often resort to costly, inflexible, solutions from proprietary vendors as they look to build or upgrade infrastructure for deploying and managing business applications. Frequently key infrastructure solutions are sourced from disparate entities with no commonality, which leads to greater complexity and higher management costs. Red Hat's Open Source Architecture will provide a secure, scalable, and manageable infrastructure for deploying enterprise business applications, allowing customers to extend the unique value and control offered by the open source approach throughout their organization.

The Open Source Architecture will be built on standards-based, open source technology. Solutions that are standards based enable interoperability throughout an organization, simplify migration and permit breadth of available solutions. Red Hat will drive to stimulate broad participation and collaboration by ISV, IHV and Open Source communities. Customers embracing the Open Source Architecture will have the benefit of high performance at a low cost with vendor independence. A modular environment designed to satisfy more pieces of the enterprise infrastructure without vendor lock-in will be the end result.

"Red Hat is making Open Source Architecture the guiding point for our development roadmap and business focus. We will work to ensure developers and vendors have the resources needed to base their solutions on open source ," said Paul Cormier, Executive Vice President of Engineering at Red Hat. "A hierarchy of common software components will enable technologies to be layered modularly resulting in great scalability and manageability throughout an entire organization's infrastructure. With an Open Source Architecture model, the customer becomes the clear winner."

The first phase in building an Open Source Architecture is the platform layer. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 will act as the unifying platform, and will support seven hardware architectures for both client and server deployments. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 was developed with an emphasis on performance, scalability, availability, and standards support. Red Hat Network is the delivery mechanism for this technology.

The second phase will address other key areas of infrastructure including a web applications framework. Working with the ObjectWeb consortium, the Apache Software Foundation and the Eclipse IDE development community, Red Hat has been contributing to the development of an open source web applications framework, J2EE implementation, and associated development tools.

Lastly, the third phase will focus on integrated virtualization and management capabilities with the goal of maximizing system utilization and lowering TCO. System virtualization will encompass storage, system provisioning, and application resource management in an on-demand, high-availability environment.

The advancement of security technologies will be paramount in all phases of Red Hat's open source architecture development. This will include implementation of an enterprise-wide security infrastructure, providing a seamless integration of multiple open source technologies such as access control, single sign-on, identity management, and authentication.

To complement these offerings, Red Hat will deliver subscription-based, global services that aid in the design and deployment of a complete Open Source Architecture based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. Red Hat Applications such as the Content Management System and Portal Server are also based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform to extend enterprise productivity. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 will be made available this quarter as part of a subscription that includes Red Hat Network and services. Please visit http://www.redhat.com for more information.

About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world's premier open source and Linux provider. Red Hat is headquartered in Raleigh, N.C. and has offices worldwide. For more information visit www.redhat.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Forward-looking statements in this press release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release that are not strictly historical statements, including, without limitation, management's plans and objectives for future operations, and management's assessment of market factors, constitute forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, reliance upon strategic relationships, management of growth, the possibility of undetected software errors, the risks of economic downturns generally, and in Red Hat's industry specifically, the risks associated with competition and competitive pricing pressures, the viability of the Internet, and other risks detailed in Red Hat's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which may be accessed through the SEC's Web site at http://www.sec.gov.

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.