European Real Estate Listing Company Cuts Costs and Energy Use with Red Hat Solutions

ImmobilienScout24 migrates to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with integrated virtualization and Red Hat Network Satellite

RALEIGH, N.C -

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that ImmobilienScout24, one of the most successful real estate listing companies in Europe serving more than 800 million pages and over three million visitors each month, has achieved significantly reduced energy use and operating costs with Red Hat solutions. Utilizing Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with built-in virtualization capabilities and Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite, ImmobilienScout24 has cut energy usage by 25 percent, hardware cost per server by 60 percent and operating costs by 10 percent - all while maintaining 100 percent uptime.

Since its website, ImmobilienScout24.de, is the core of its business, uptime and performance are crucial factors for meeting customer expectations. To meet demands, ImmobilienScout24 migrated from a 32-bit Windows server environment to a 64-bit server environment based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in 2005. As it faced the challenge of scheduled end-of-life for many of its servers in 2008, ImmobilienScout24 planned for a new virtualization initiative to speed provisioning time and reduce overall spending costs. Additionally, the company's datacenter provider broke the news that it was unable to provide any additional power, at any cost, for ImmobilienScout24's servers. Recognizing its rapid growth rate and already challenging power needs, it decided to search for a new vendor that could provide a reliable virtualization solution to help carve out costs and diminish power consumption.

ImmobilienScout24's plan was to reduce its current 200 physical servers down to 90 physical servers with more than 400 logical server instances. In its test lab in Berlin, ImmobilienScout24 worked closely with its operations service provider, Computacenter, to monitor and measure performance of a variety of solutions on both physical and virtual machines.

"We measured the services running on VMware, which typically showed a 20 percent performance degradation compared to services running on the physical server," said Oliver Schindelhauer, head of operations at ImmobilienScout24. "When we tested Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform with integrated virtualization capabilities, tests showed only a mere three percent difference between virtual and physical machines, which is an impressive virtualization performance result."

In addition to Red Hat's winning virtualization performance, it also offered cost advantages to ImmobilienScout24. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform includes virtualization built into the operating system at no additional fee, eliminating the need to tack on an additional, and often expensive, third-party vendor solution. Combining performance and cost benefits, Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform was the solution of choice for ImmobilienScout24.

The company also utilized Red Hat Cluster Suite, included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform at no added cost, to create a comprehensive network design that included failover clusters between different physical machines. By carefully designing the clusters and physical and virtual machines, the team created a system that could easily accommodate future growth, while maintaining 100 percent uptime. It also utilizes Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite to reliably and simply manage the lifecycle of the systems on its network.

The ImmobilienScout24 team began the project in February and was finished implementing its Red Hat solution by May, completely on schedule and with no impact on plattform uptime.

"With Red Hat, we reduced power consumption by 25 percent to 21 megawatt hours per month without affecting performance or uptime. We reduced hardware cost per server by an impressive 60 percent, lowered licensing costs by 50 percent and reduced operations costs with a simplified management solution by 10 percent," said Schindelhauer.

"Without Red Hat solutions, we would not have been able to continue the growth that our executive team planned for the year," said Dr. Oliver Zeiler, CTO of ImmobilienScout24. "But now, we have a significantly more agile and cost-efficient datacenter and services infrastructure. In fact, with the cost savings we've achieved with Red Hat, this project will have paid for itself in three months."

To read the full ImmobilienScout24 case study, visit www.customers.press.redhat.com.

To learn more about how Red Hat can help customers carve out costs in their IT infrastructure, visit www.redhat.com/carveoutcosts/.

For more news 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 have ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise Software for four 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: 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 and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; 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 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 conditions, and governmental and public policy changes. 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."

LINUX™ is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT® and JBOSS® are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the US and other countries.

  • 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.