Red Hat Delivers Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT) today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, the first update to the platform since the delivery of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 in November 2010. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1, Red Hat continues to set the standard in flexibility, performance and quality that customers around the world rely on for their open source enterprise environments, spanning physical, virtual and cloud deployments.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 enhancements provide customers with improvements in system reliability, scalability and performance, coupled with support for upcoming system hardware. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 also delivers patches and security updates, while maintaining application compatibility and OEM/ISV certifications.

"With Linux adoption growing across all workloads, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 provides more enterprise reliability, performance and control throughout the datacenter," said Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Platform Business at Red Hat. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 continues to lead Linux innovation as we drive adoption across workloads that include physical, virtual and cloud deployments. We're pleased to provide these new capabilities to our global customers today."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 is already established as a performance leader serving both as a virtual machine guest and hypervisor host in SPECvirt benchmarks. Red Hat and HP recently announced that the combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with KVM running on a HP ProLiant BL620c G7 20-core Blade server delivered a record-setting SPECvirt_sc2010 benchmark result. Red Hat and IBM also recently announced that the companies submitted a benchmark to SPEC in which a combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and IBM systems delivered 45% better consolidation capability than competitors in performance tests conducted by Red Hat and IBM. See www.spec.org for details.

"Building on our decade-long partnership to optimize Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM platforms, our companies have collaborated closely on the development of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1," said Jean Staten Healy, director, Cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 combined with IBM hardware capabilities offers our customers expanded flexibility, performance and scalability across their bare metal, virtualized and cloud environments. Our collaboration continues to drive innovation and leading results in the industry."

In addition to performance improvements, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 also provides numerous technology updates, including:

•     Additional configuration options for advanced storage configurations with improvements in FCoE, Datacenter Bridging and iSCSI offload, which allow networked storage to deliver the quality of service commonly associated with directly connected storage
•     Enhancements in virtualization, file systems, scheduler, resource management and high availability
•     New technologies that enable smoother enterprise deployments and tighter integration with heterogeneous systems
•     A technology preview of Red Hat Enterprise Identity (IPA) services, based on the open source FreeIPA project
•     Support for automatic failover for virtual machines and applications using the Red Hat High Availability Add-On
•     Integrated developer tools that provide the ability to write, debug, profile and deploy applications without leaving the graphical environment
•     Improvements to network traffic processing to leverage multi-processor servers that are getting increasingly common

Industry analyst firm IDC recently conducted primary research, commissioned by Red Hat, to determine the long-term total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits provided by Red Hat Enterprise Linux when compared to other strategies, such as running mixed environments or non-paid Linux distributions. Results show that through more efficient operations, higher ratios of servers and users per administrator and reduced downtime, customers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions can realize significant cost savings and price/performance improvements. For the full report, visit https://engage.redhat.com/forms/linux-deployment-strategies?sc_cid=70160000000TMTsAAO.

"IDC conducted a study that evaluated organizations that are heavily standardized on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and compared those organizations with others that had a mixture of Linux distributions in use, and organizations that were heavily penetrated by non-paid Linux distributions. The outcome of the study found that there is demonstrable business benefit associated with having professional support for an operating system, compared to a do-it-yourself approach," said Al Gillen, Program VP, System Software at IDC. "The real benefits came from lower IT staff costs and reduced end user downtime."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.1 is available to subscribing Red Hat customers today worldwide.

For more information about Red Hat Enterprise Linux, visit www.redhat.com/rhel.

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 provider of open source solutions and an S&P 500 company, 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 seven 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 virtualization, applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and 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 delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; 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.

Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat, the Shadowman logo and JBoss are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Red Hat, Inc.
Emily Stancil, 919-301-3010
estancil@redhat.com

Source: Red Hat, Inc.

News Provided by Acquire Media