IT is a core business differentiator. To support modern business initiatives, IT organizations must optimize their infrastructure with Linux and other enterprise open source software. As one of the world’s most dominant operating systems with widespread adoption across industries and emerging technologies, Linux provides an ideal platform for modern IT. It is the de facto standard for highly available, reliable, and critical workloads in datacenters and cloud computing environments and supports a variety of use cases, target systems, and devices. Every major public cloud provider — including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Alibaba Cloud — offers multiple distributions of Linux in their marketplaces. In fact, more than 75% of cloud-enabled enterprises report using Linux as their primary cloud platform.

Linux provides:

• Open source innovation
• Consistency across infrastructure
• Container portability
• Massive scalability
• Continuous security

Choosing the right Linux distribution is critical. Different Linux distributions offer different benefits. Some have lower subscription and ongoing operational costs. Others may integrate better with your existing infrastructure, as well as third-party hardware, software, and tools. Finally, each provides distinct support levels and time frames.

A consistent, intelligent operating foundation for modern IT and enterprise hybrid cloud deployments, Red Hat Enterprise Linux delivers optimal benefits for your organization. Consistency across infrastructure allows you to deploy applications, workloads, and services using the same tools, regardless of location. And by giving you more control, confidence, and freedom to innovate, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 reduces the friction and cost of cloud deployment while accelerating time to market for critical business workloads. As a result, you can deploy and operate the enterprise hybrid cloud environment your business needs faster and with less effort.

A Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription delivers more than just software and support. It provides access to the resources, tools, and technologies you need to be successful. It also provides advocacy for your current and future needs in upstream communities and industry groups.

To support digital business needs, IT teams must be able to adapt quickly without compromising stability, flexibility, or innovation. A Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription gives you direct access to the latest enterprise-ready Linux innovation certified for interoperability with Red Hat’s complete portfolio of software, automation, and management technologies. Cross-portfolio integration, certification with a large ecosystem of partner products, and a choice of architectures and versions improve interoperability across your environment. The Red Hat certified partner ecosystem gives you access to more than 5,000 third-party applications1 and 4,500 third-party server models2 that are verified to work reliably in your Red Hat Enterprise Linux environment. Intense testing and hardening and a controlled, trusted software supply chain allow you to foster innovation without compromising reliability.

Open source technologies are important for modern IT, but many organizations do not have the time, resources, or desire to follow and participate in every community that matters to their business. As a trusted advisor and leading contributor to key open source communities, Red Hat advocates for your requirements in upstream projects. Red Hat assesses customer needs, shapes open source projects to meet those needs, and contributes all new and changed code back to the open source community to ensure future interoperability.

Red Hat also identifies important emerging technologies and works to develop them into enterprise-ready solutions that meet future IT needs. Using a proven open source development model, Red Hat curates emerging open source projects according to anticipated customer needs, releases hardened and tested versions through Red Hat Technology Preview, and adds the most useful features into Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases. As a result, you can try out emerging technologies in a safer, more controlled manner, knowing that they come from a trusted supply chain.

21% of data breaches are the result of errors like misconfigurations. Included with all active Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscriptions, Red Hat Insights can help you keep your systems up to date and configured properly. Red Hat Insights is a Software-as-a-Service offering that collects analytics about your environment to proactively identify and remediate threats to security, availability, stability, and performance. Increased visibility helps you get ahead of security risks and fix them before business operations are impacted. Continuous vulnerability alerts allow you to maximize uptime and avoid fire-fighting. Automated monitoring and remediation minimizes human error while streamlining operations and maintenance. And, with actionable intelligence, you can confidently scale complex environments with no added infrastructure cost.

Delivering consistent and stable IT performance is the top business priority for organizations globally. A Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription offers flexible, stable, and security-focused life-cycle options to support your business requirements. You can choose from multiple supported versions, upgrade on your schedule, and adopt new features as you need them. Up to 10 years of updates and support for major releases, two years of updates and support for minor releases, and binary compatibility between releases lets you plan for long-term success. In fact, organizations that deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux experience 16% fewer unplanned outages and 39% lower productivity loss due to unplanned downtime compared to those using other operating systems. Finally, ongoing access to advanced security features, patches, and guidance helps you implement continuous security strategies to protect your business.

You need to ensure compliance with corporate, regulatory, and industry requirements while protecting your systems from security threats and supporting new business objectives. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides multilevel protection from threats, flexible security tools, and simpler ways to maintain compliance. A dedicated security team, scanning and remediation tools, and ongoing access to new resources help you ensure continuous compliance. Automated security tools, regular updates and patch releases, and accessible security intelligence and expertise improve threat protection. Certification to stringent security standards — including Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2, Common Criteria (CC), and Secure Technical Implementation Guidelines (STIG) — lets you use Red Hat Enterprise Linux across industries and situations without compromising security.

Security feature highlight: OpenSCAP

OpenSCAP is a line of specifications for maintaining the security of enterprise systems. It verifies the presence of patches by using content produced by the Red Hat Security Response Team, checks system security configuration settings, and examines systems for signs of compromise using rules based on standards and specifications. OpenSCAP is certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), trusted by thousands of Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers, and updated with every minor release.

Long-term business plans require long-term IT planning to ensure you can support initiatives over time. As a result, you need visibility into and influence over the roadmaps of the technologies you rely upon. Red Hat builds long-term relationships with customers to ensure that you are well-supported over time. Red Hat is a stable company with long-standing customers, including 100% of airlines, communications service providers, commercial banks, and healthcare companies in the Fortune Global 500.8 Collaborative roadmap planning, advance visibility into new features, and influence over development let you benefit from cross-industry, cross-requirement improvements to Red Hat products.

Red Hat’s engagement process

1. Understand technical requirements and long-term business goals.
2. Assess technical trade-offs to meet long-, medium-, and short-term goals.
3. Recommend a solution based on Red Hat expert assessment.
4. Develop the solution with needed changes and new features.
5. Validate new code to ensure performance and stability.
6. Release the new code and solution for customer testing and use.
7. Contribute all new and changed code back to the open source community.
8. Deploy the solution according to customer needs.

Customer-driver feature highlight: Image Builder

Organizations are using an increasing number of IT footprints, making it difficult to deploy the same software across environments consistently. Red Hat saw the need for a streamlined image deployment tool and validated that concept with strategic customers and software partners. As a result of these conversations, Red Hat created the Image Builder tool for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Image Builder makes it easy to curate content from Red Hat and create blueprints that can be replicated across footprints.

No one vendor provides all of the technologies needed for modern IT operations. As a result, it can be challenging to find the right hardware, software, and cloud platforms, ensure interoperability and stability between those components, and optimize performance across multivendor environments. Red Hat partners with leading hardware, software, and cloud vendors to give you more choice, innovation, and stability. Through testing, certification, and collaborative engineering, Red Hat works with partners to deliver multivendor technologies and solutions that meet your requirements for innovation, availability, performance, and security. Red Hat fosters a large certified partner ecosystem — including partners like Microsoft, SAP, and major cloud providers — so you can choose the products and platforms that best fit your needs, knowing they will work reliably with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Partner programs like the Red Hat Certified Cloud and Service Provider (CCSP) program provide resources and guidance to help partners more easily collaborate and certify with Red Hat. In fact, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is certified for use with all major cloud providers and is the top commercial Linux distribution for public cloud deployments. 

A fast changing security landscape makes it challenging to keep systems aligned with the latest standards, adopt new technologies without compromising protection, and ensure compatibility between updates and existing infrastructure. Red Hat advocates for your needs in security standards forums and industry groups. Work within the security community ensures that security standards are interoperable with existing Red Hat infrastructure and across platforms. Incorporating the latest security technologies — including enterprise security features, simplified security management, and enterprise adoption aids — into new products makes them more secure by default. Finally, Red Hat security experts analyze technology trends to anticipate future security requirements and start developing new solutions proactively.

Security advocacy highlight: SELinux in containers

SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) implements mandatory access control (MAC) to provide an additional layer of system security. With SELinux, every process and system resource has a special context label that defines its security properties. As an increasing number of customers deploy containers, Red Hat worked to include advanced security features like SELinux in its container platform. Red Hat experts extended the container environment and runtime specification to support security extensions through SELinux labels, improving container isolation.

The Linux distribution you choose impacts how well your IT infrastructure can support your business. A Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription gives you the access and advocacy you need to support modern, digital business initiatives today and in the future.

Try Red Hat Enterprise Linux for free at redhat.com/try-it.