Finnish City of Kankaanpää Cuts Project Hardware Costs by 50 Percent with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

City creates a single point of management for simplified and centralized desktop and server availability

RALEIGH, N.C -

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the City of Kankaanpää, the main centre for trade, education and the commercial heart of Northern Satakunta, Finland, has increased scalability while simplifying and centralizing desktop and server availability with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.

In 2008, the city’s information and communications technology (ICT) department faced several IT-related challenges. The management and configuration of individual desktops at several locations in and around the city, including diverse places such as public libraries and schools became very difficult to manage. In addition, there were numerous mission-critical solutions running on physical servers in its datacenter that presented a constant risk of downtime, which could directly impact business continuity. Lastly, the effect of running IT services on a limited number of physical servers increased complexity when deploying new applications, services or during hardware migration projects, which the city found to be both time consuming and expensive.  

“We soon realized the need to re-draft the architecture of the city’s IT infrastructure by virtualizing and consolidating both server and desktop environments onto one, centrally managed platform,” said Jukka Ehto, head of ICT at City of Kankaanpää. “The city determined that by implementing clustering capabilities across servers to increase redundancy in the datacenter, we could leverage higher availability for mission-critical applications and services running on these systems.”

To simplify and centralize the management of desktops, Netorek, a Red Hat Advanced Partner, deployed Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, which allows the city’s ICT department to deploy, configure and run Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows desktops in public institutions throughout the city. To virtualize the city’s server environment, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers was implemented in the city’s datacenter.

“Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops is a valued asset for the city of Kankaanpää  to deploy virtual workstations efficiently across its entire organization. The quantifiable effects of implementing Red Hat virtualization in Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops were remarkable,” said Ehto. “The project costs for deploying new desktops were cut by 50 percent and deployment time was reduced by 10 percent. In addition, the life span of existing desktop PCs has been extended, as they can now serve as re-purposed thin clients, hosting virtual desktops run in the datacenter, which requires less capacity from physical clients.”

The city of Kankaanpää has also improved the availability and stability of mission-critical applications running on virtualized servers in its datacenter since migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers, enhancing the reliability of the IT services provided to the city’s employees and citizens. The number of reported IT incidents has also decreased by 20 percent, freeing up support resources.

Cost savings and higher availability of servers are some of the project’s most tangible business benefits for the city of Kankaanpää. Running multiple workloads on virtual servers has increased hardware utilization from 10 percent to as much as 80 percent. Red Hat’s subscription model provides the city with access to reliable support services, as well as certified and tested solutions. Additionally, system-wide maintenance features easily allow the new Red Hat environment to be updated and patched with security updates, reducing downtime for end users.

To learn more about how the city of Kankaanpää is using Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization to support its mission-critical solutions, read the full case study at www.redhat.com/resourcelibrary/case-studies/finnish-city-of-kankaanpaa-cuts-costs-with-rhev.

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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.

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  • 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.