Global Enterprises See Cost Efficient, Reliable Scaling, and Unified Development with Migrations to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

Government of the Canary Islands, Bonhams, Profit Software, and Rural Credit Banks Funds Migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization to Meet Growing Business Needs

RALEIGH, N.C. -

RALEIGH, N.C. - October 15, 2013 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced global customer momentum for its Cloud Infrastructure solutions. The Government of the Canary Islands, Bonhams, Profit Software, and Rural Credit Banks Funds have successfully migrated their virtualized systems from VMware to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization in order to meet their growing business demands and manage global IT assets.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is a scalable, high performance virtualization solution built on open source technologies including the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)-based Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor and a management platform derived from the oVirt project. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is also a key component of Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure, a solution which enables organizations to build and manage a private cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) based upon datacenter virtualization and management technologies for traditional workloads, while providing an on-ramp to a highly scalable public-cloud-like infrastructure based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform. It is offered as a single subscription offering composed of four component technologies: Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Red Hat CloudForms, Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. As organizations look to build and manage private cloud IaaS, Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure has emerged as a high performing offering with compelling business value when compared to proprietary cloud infrastructure offerings.

Government of the Canary Islands
The Government of the Canary Islands of Spain is responsible for processing regional business applications and providing eGovernment services, with both applications requiring horizontal and vertical scaling. Following population and workload growth, the Government faced staggering virtualization costs and found that their previous virtualization infrastructure could not keep pace with the growing workloads.

To meet these requirements, the Canary Islands sought a virtualization solution that offered reduced ownership costs without compromised quality. After evaluating solutions, the Government of the Canary Islands found that Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization was more cost-effective and provided greater capacity and improved service levels and continuity. Additionally, the Government found that Red Hat’s cloud infrastructure solution provided a cost savings of 70 percent compared to proprietary solutions. The Government of the Canary Islands of Spain successfully migrated 100 physical servers running approximately 1,000 VMware virtual machines to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization with zero downtime and no user impact. As the Canary Islands’ population grows and places more services demands on their IT infrastructure, the Government plans to virtualize more workloads and reduce their current block of 100 physical servers to even fewer machines.

Bonhams
As one of the oldest and largest auction houses in the world, Bonhams found itself with many unsupported systems after a significant period of growth, including mergers and acquisitions. Bonhams wanted to gain the benefits of server virtualization and integrate with its United States location’s use of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization in order to have a single global system to manage all its assets remotely and support its Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategy. The U.K. had previously used VMware and found the licenses to be a major part of the total cost, and the move to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has delivered significant cost savings and performance benefits. As a result, they sought to replace their aging servers with a reliable, scalable, and cost-effective platform that enabled remote management of global IT assets while supporting full disaster recovery.

Bonhams worked with Quru, a U.K.-based solutions provider to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on IBM System x servers, enabling Bonhams to avoid vendor lock-in and consolidating their physical servers by nearly 75 percent. Additionally, through the lower licensing costs with Red Hat, the solution was implemented at 50 percent of the cost for an equivalent VMware project in the U.K. Bonhams has been so satisfied with the performance of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization running on IBM System x servers, finding that the KVM technology has boosted their organizational efficiency that they are planning to continue their migration by moving the entire IT infrastructure in their U.K. office from VMware to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for consistent scaling and management as its business continues to grow.

Profit Software
Profit Software, a supplier of product-based IT software to Northern Europe’s insurance and financial sector, found that separate development environments resulted in wasted resources and inefficient environmental maintenance. They turned to Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure to help unify its development environment across three locations, providing increased operational efficiency. Profit was able to continue business processes as usual with minimal downtime during their migration from VMware to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization-based solutions, and programmers can now work in a standardized environment from a common environment, instead of waiting for their development space to be installed on a physical server. After the migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, development environment build time was reduced from one day to one hour, and these environments can be accessed remotely as a virtual desktop through a secure browser connection. Profit plans to migrate their remaining servers that are virtualized on VMware to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, and they will be able to scale these future solutions to meet business needs.

Rural Credit Banks Funds Clearing Center
Rural Credit Banks Funds Clearing Center encompasses 31 nationwide province-level credit union associations in Beijing, including rural cooperative banks, rural commercial banks, and the Shenzhen Rural Commercial Bank. Rapid business development and 35 percent year-over-year growth left Rural Credit Banks Funds Clearing Center with an imperative need to upgrade the server infrastructure that supported its information system operation. Rural Credit Banks Funds Clearing Center migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization on IBM BladeCenter blade servers to optimize their system resources and decrease power consumption and space used.

The flexibility of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization enabled Rural Credit Banks Funds Clearing Center to customize, scale, and automate their business management functions without sacrificing performance speed. Their migration from VMware also resulted in reduced hardware needs and fewer licensing and maintenance costs. The system monitoring and alarming built into Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization will enable Rural Credit Banks Funds Clearing Center to scale their business sustainably.

Supporting Quotes
Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager, Virtualization, Red Hat
"We're excited that Red Hat has become a top choice for customers looking for an open alternative to established virtualization solutions, either as part of their multi-hypervisor strategy or as part of a migration fueled by need to contain or reduce costs. Bonhams, the Government of the Canary Islands, and Profit mirror use-cases we’ve seen from enterprise customers around the globe: their existing virtualization solutions are proving to be costly and limiting in terms of scalability. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization offers a better performing solution with dramatically improved value. We look forward to continuing our work with these customers on their journey to the open hybrid cloud via solutions like Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure.”

Roberto Diaz, general manager, Telecommunications and New Technologies, Government of the Canary Islands
“Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has provided us with specific, advanced features to help us
manage our virtualized infrastructure more efficiently. Key factors for our decision to migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization were its cost-effective price point and its excellent performance in the industry. ”

Robin Porter, business development manager, Quru
“The virtualization of the servers in Bonhams’ U.K. office was a half-a-million pound project, 50 percent of which was spent on licenses. Having been a Red Hat Enterprise Linux user since 2002, it made perfect business sense for Bonhams to deploy Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization in the U.S., avoiding lock-in and eliminating licensing costs.”

Tomi Pakarinen, lead architect, Profit Software
“Because of the efficiencies and capability to run both servers and desktops, as well as Windows and Linux environments on the same platform, our Red Hat solution gives us back the time to imagine and innovate.”

Yoa Chunyang, assistant general manager of IT Operation Assurance, Rural Credit Banks
“Selecting enterprise-level open source products allow us to be more proactive. We avoid vendor lock-in and more importantly, we have access to world-class technical support. We now understand virtualization standardization, security, and efficiency, which makes us confident in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization,”

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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 www.redhat.com.

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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.

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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.