Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization: Channel Significance

While software spending in the mid-market is poised to return to positive growth , this sector of the market is generally cost conscious and is likely to expect increased ROI and high value for each dollar spent on technology. This is where we believe that server virtualization is particularly positioned to deliver, not only value, but overall savings as well.

Yesterday, Red Hat announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers. We expect this announcement to help our partners by driving additional value to end customers.

As The VAR Guy pointed out earlier this fall, virtualized environments can yield up to a “60% return on investment over a four year time period,” which we feel is an opportunity that our partners and their customers can’t afford to pass up.

Server virtualization is expected to help customers reduce server “sprawl,” reduce maintenance and energy costs and increase performance capabilities. Additionally, Red Hat channel partners can assist their end customers with deployment, configuration, and consultation around virtualized servers.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers is an end-to-end virtualization solution designed to enable pervasive datacenter virtualization and significantly enhance capital and operational efficiency. It consists of the following components:

• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers: A feature-rich server virtualization management system that provides advanced capabilities for hosts and guests, including high availability, live migration, storage management, system scheduler, and more.

• Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor: A modern hypervisor based on Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization technology, which can be deployed either as the standalone bare metal hypervisor (included), or as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 and later (purchased separately) installed as a hypervisor host and managed through Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers.

With the announcement this summer of our enhanced North American Partner Program, partners in North America must be authorized to sell Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization products; which includes being a registered Red Hat partner with a Virtualization Specialization. The specialization is achieved when a partner employs at least one Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization technical-certified associate and at least two Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization sales-certified associates. Partners can click here to register for both the sales and technical courses.

The introduction of general availability for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers is an exciting opportunity for our valued partners in North America to be on the leading edge of Red Hat’s deeper expansion into the virtualization market.