Red Hat Sets Its Virtualization Agenda

Outlines broad-reaching product strategy to drive virtualization adoption into new and existing markets

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Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced its virtualization strategy for 2009 and beyond, outlining plans to significantly expand and enhance its server, client and management products to enable ubiquitous adoption of virtualization across the enterprise. Red Hat is in a unique position to deliver comprehensive virtualization for customers. Leveraging a strong ecosystem of hardware and software partners, the Company will focus on breaking down barriers to reliable, large-scale virtualization deployment. Virtualization provides a foundational component of Red Hat's broader strategy to deliver flexible cloud computing environments with the ability to deploy any application, anywhere, at anytime.

Red Hat has held a strong position in the virtualization industry since the debut of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with virtualization technology integrated into the operating system, making it the leading commercial-quality open source virtualization solution. In parallel, Red Hat's September 2008 acquisition of Qumranet, Inc., including KVM, SolidICE/SPICE and management technologies, provided the foundation with which to build the next generation of virtualization offerings.

Today, though the adoption of virtualization technologies is growing rapidly, and delivering high return on investment, industry analyst research indicates that many customers have yet to deploy virtualization in enterprise and mission-critical environments. Red Hat is leveraging this opportunity with the announcement of its strategy to deliver a high-performance, secure and manageable infrastructure for the enterprise, spanning datacenters and internal and external clouds running a wide range of enterprise workloads.

As part of Red Hat's strategy to offer customers a complete set of virtualization solutions that allows the entire spectrum of enterprise workloads to run on one common infrastructure, it announces the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization portfolio of products, including four primary components:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux: Red Hat's strategic direction for the future development of its virtualization product portfolio is based on KVM, making Red Hat the only virtualization vendor leveraging technology that is developed as part of the Linux operating system. Existing Xen-based deployments will continue to be supported for the full lifetime of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, and Red Hat will provide a variety of tools and services to enable customers to migrate from their Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Xen deployment to KVM.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers: A new, richly featured virtualization management solution for servers that will be the first open source product in the industry to allow fully integrated management across virtual servers and virtual desktops, featuring Live Migration, High Availability, System Scheduler, Power Manager, Image manager, Snapshots, thin provisioning, monitoring and reporting. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers will be able to manage both Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 hosts, as well as the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Desktops: A new management system for virtual desktops that will deliver industry-leading VDI cost-performance for both Linux and Windows desktops, based on Qumranet's SolidICE and using SPICE remote rendering technology.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor: A new standalone hypervisor designed to be ideal for Red Hat's partners and customers to lay down a standard, lightweight, high-performance virtualization foundation for guest environments.

Red Hat plans for the new virtualization products in Red Hat's Enterprise Virtualization suite to be delivered sequentially over the next three to 18 months, with delivery dates beginning in the middle of 2009.

By combining advancements in Intel® Virtualization Technology with Red Hat's Enterprise Virtualization portfolio Intel and Red Hat are able to offer customers a solution with outstanding performance, scalability and agility.

"Customers are demanding advanced virtualization solutions that are easy to deploy and manage," said Doug Fisher, vice president, Intel Software and Services Group, and general manager, Systems Software Division. "Intel provides the technology to deliver these solutions through enhanced hardware assist for virtualization and major software contributions to open source virtualization projects such as KVM and Xen. The compelling combination of Intel® Virtualization Technology, Intel® Xeon® processor-based servers, open source innovations, and Red Hat's Enterprise Virtualization portfolio provide the innovative virtualization solution the industry demands."

"With Red Hat's strategy and virtualization roadmap outlined today, Red Hat is uniquely positioned to extend the reach of virtualization with our complete virtualization solutions portfolio, combining our core operating system strength, next-generation virtualization technology and quality, scalable management tools," said Paul Cormier, executive vice president and president, Products and Technologies at Red Hat. "With this complete set of virtualization solutions, Red Hat is breaking through barriers to lift the limitations placed on virtualization and cloud computing for today's enterprises."

"Linux virtualization is rapidly proving itself as a robust and highly scalable technology for enterprise-level deployment," said Inna Kuznetsova, director of IBM Linux strategy. "Red Hat Linux already supports the platform-driven virtualization capabilities of IBM POWER Systems and System z mainframes. We anticipate that the KVM hypervisor and its integration into Red Hat Linux will help our System x customers reap the benefits of datacenter virtualization while enjoying the economies and flexibility offered by open source solutions. As IBM provides industry-leading virtualization solutions to our customers, we will look to tap Red Hat's success in delivering Linux virtualization benefits on our System x, POWER and System z platforms."

To learn more about this announcement, join Red Hat's virtualization webcast, which will be broadcast live at 11 a.m. ET on February 23, 2009. The webcast will also be available for replay. To join, visit www.redhat.com/promo/webcast/223.

For more information, visit www.redhat.com/virtualization-strategy.

For more news about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com. Visit Red Hat at VMWorld, Europe, February 24-26 in Cannes.

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.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the integration of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; adverse results in litigation; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's Web site at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. Furthermore, the Company is under no obligation to develop the products, features, or functionality noted within this press release. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.

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  • About Red Hat
  • Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.



  • Forward-Looking Statements
  • Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company’s growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.