Red Hat's Thriving Partner Ecosystem Focus of EMEA Partner Summit 2009

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions welcomed a record number of attendees to its EMEA Partner Summit, which took place in Malta last week. Delegates at the three-day conference attended product and strategy updates, technical workshops and also made the most of networking and knowledge-sharing opportunities. This year's Partner Summit saw a 40 per cent increase in delegates compared to last year, with attendees travelling to Malta from 38 countries across the EMEA region.

“The power of open source and Red Hat's momentum is evident in our growing partner ecosystem and this annual event is an opportunity for Red Hat's partner community to share and collaborate best-practices across the region”, said Petra Heinrich, director of partners and alliances, EMEA at Red Hat. “Our partners and customers are taking advantage of the opportunities presented by open source software and with our proven technology solutions, that solve real-world business challenges, we’re continually distinguishing ourselves from the competition.”

In addition to the conference agenda, Red Hat honored a select group of partners, recognizing their successes, commitment to customers and their help in driving the adoption of the Linux and open source middleware platforms worldwide. Those partners awarded were from across the EMEA region and are representative of the innovative, committed partners that are at the heart of Red Hat’s partner ecosystem:

• Distributor of the Year: Interactive Ideas, UK
• Infrastructure Partner of the Year: Redpill Linpro, Nordics
• Middleware Partner of the Year: Sourcesense, Italy
• Partnering the Partner: Magirus, Germany
• ISV Partner of the Year: Zimbra
• Innovative Marketing Campaign of the Year: ITWay, Italy

During the Summit, CEO, Jim Whitehurst addressed attending partners during his keynote called The Open Source Opportunity, where he shared his vision of how the open source model is meeting the IT demands of today and providing a means for developing and solving problems faster, better and at a lower cost, despite the current economic conditions. As a vehicle for economic and social change, he reinforced that the power of open source is immeasurable in changing how people learn, how developers create and how companies do business.

“In the last 10 years, IBM and Red Hat’s alliance has grown in scope, spurring overall Linux adoption and building a foundation for its broad use by companies in all industries today”, said Inna Kuznetsova, director of IBM Linux Strategy. “By working closely, Red Hat and IBM are delivering innovative solutions to clients as they search for greater efficiencies, lower costs, and better integration.”

The Summit delegates were updated on Red Hat’s virtualization technology roadmap, which includes plans for the Red Enterprise Virtualization product portfolio, which will provide customers with the next generation of virtualization technology.

Red Hat will continue its commitment to its partners at the co-located Red Hat Summit and JBoss World, September 1-4, 2009 in Chicago, IL, USA, Additionally the next Annual EMEA Partner Summit will be hosted in the Spring of 2010, please visit www.redhat.com/partners for up-to-date information.

For more information about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.

About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 65 offices spanning the globe. CIOs ranked Red Hat as one of the top vendors delivering value in Enterprise Software for five consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

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