Red Hat Linux Powers Credit Suisse First Boston's Massive Global Trading Architecture

Delivers 20x Performance Boost for Mission Critical Applications

RALEIGH, N.C. -

Red Hat, Inc. (Nasdaq:RHAT), the world's premier open source and Linux provider, today announced that a mission critical component of the Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) worldwide financial trading architecture has been successfully migrated from Unix to Red Hat Linux. CSFB is a leading global investment bank serving institutional, corporate, government and individual clients. Its application, called Agora (Greek for marketplace), performs complex financial transactions such as basket trading, time slicing, and institutional order flow and is able to drive thousands of orders, in a matter of seconds, to locations around the globe, including the U.K., Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea.

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"In an environment of increasing trading volumes and surges in demand, our systems need to be agile. We can gain a competitive advantage with a system that is flexible enough to constantly adapt to new business requirements while always improving prices for our customers," said Steve Yatko, director and CTO of Securities IT at CSFB. "Since implementing Red Hat Linux on the Egenera BladeFrame, we've noticed significant performance enhancements. Agora has evolved to the point where we are executing record trading volumes."

Agora's enterprise notification system, powered by Red Hat Linux, processes roughly 35 million global and 25 million U.S. transactions each day. CSFB converted from a four-way RISC-based architecture to a two-way Intel architecture running Red Hat on an Intel chip. With Egenera as the platform provider, Agora's structure is made up of high-powered Egenera BladeFrame systems running Red Hat Linux. The combination of Red Hat Linux with the BladeFrame consolidates servers and improves performance while lowering cost for business-critical applications.

As a result of its Red Hat implementation, CSFB will consolidate more than 20 RISC-based machines to only a few Intel processors, which can process up to a half-billion transactions each day per Egenera Processing Blade. CSFB has also noticed a 20x increase in overall performance, in contrast to traditional legacy UNIX systems.

"The results CSFB has achieved with Red Hat Linux show the power not only of our technology, or their knowledge of their own application, but the strength of the relationship and the results of working together as partners," said Michael Tiemann, CTO of Red Hat. "Even when an application is developed and tuned on a proprietary Unix platform, I fully expect to see superior performance when the application is migrated to Red Hat Linux on Intel processors. But I must honestly say that I am amazed to see how significantly the results favor the Red Hat Linux platform for this decidedly enterprise application. My hat is off to the engineers from both companies for achieving this outstanding result."

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading open source and Linux provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with middleware, applications and management solutions. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat's open source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com

Forward-Looking Statements

Forward-looking statements in this press release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Investors are cautioned that statements in this press release that are not strictly historical statements, including, without limitation, management's plans and objectives for future operations, and management's assessment of market factors, constitute forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, reliance upon strategic relationships, management of growth, the possibility of undetected software errors, the risks of economic downturns generally, and in Red Hat's industry specifically, the risks associated with competition and competitive pricing pressures, the viability of the Internet, and other risks detailed in Red Hat's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which may be accessed through the SEC's Web site at http://www.sec.gov.

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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
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