Red Hat Expands Virtualization Opportunities for European Customers

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the appointment of four new Premier Partners with its Virtualization Specialization to further drive the adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization across Europe. Reflecting an increased focus on open source virtualization among businesses in Europe, the Red Hat partners bring significant expertise and know-how to deliver a combined product offering to end customers. The first partners selected for this Virtualization Specialist status are GROUPLINK (Germany), Kelway (UK), Redpill Linpro (Norway), and SCC (Spain).

The Virtualization Specialist partners aim to leverage the market appetite for virtualization to deliver cloud computing solutions based on Red Hat technology. The participating partners will be able to draw on resources such as subsidised Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization technical training to complement their own proven expertise in virtualization technology to deliver customers a comprehensive open source platform for virtualization.

“There is already momentum behind desktop virtualization – add into the mix cloud computing and it is clear that Red Hat is hitting the European market at an opportune time,” said Graham Layton, Vendor Relationship Manager, Kelway, the UK’s fastest growing IT services and solutions provider. “We've been heavily engaged in virtualization from the outset, so we understand what the UK market needs and have the skills to address customer demands. There are a lot of businesses that are already building their infrastructure on open source technology and we're excited to be working with Red Hat to maximise these opportunities.”

“The case for virtualization has wide support,” said Michael Nemecky, Business Area Manager Managed Services/Infrastructure Services, Redpill Linpro, one of Norway’s leading lights in open source technology provision. “The focus now has to be on proving the benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, compared to closed and proprietary alternatives. The Red Hat Virtualization Specialist partner program gives us easy access to all the training and support that we need to guide customers in Norway through the planning and roll-out of virtualization in their business.”

“The advantages of working with a subscription-based model in comparison to licenses are huge. The subscription-based approach of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization means more can be invested in designing our customers’ infrastructure, rather than being simply sunk into license fees,” said Dominik Dietrich, Key Account Manager, GROUPLINK, a mid-market specialist in data centre design and architecture, present at 21 locations all over Germany. “While proprietary virtualization solutions saw rapid growth, we believe that now the time for open source virtualization solutions has come. The market is ready for Red Hat to unlock new markets for virtualization by breaking down barriers to adoption.”

“Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization provides an easy on-ramp for customers that have made an early commitment to the cloud,” commented Eloy Caro, General Manager, SCC, a leader in Spanish data centre technology. “Our customers value the flexibility and openness of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, with the added comfort of industrial strength security and support. As a Red Hat Premier Partner, with Virtualization specialism, we can add local understanding and personnel into the mix, creating a supportive ecosystem for any customer embarking on cloud deployments.”

“Leveraging combined offerings from Red Hat and its Virtualization Specialist partners means that customers have the opportunity to reduce hardware and operational costs,” said Petra Heinrich, vice president, Partners & Alliances, EMEA at Red Hat. “As Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is a foundational technology for Red Hat's cloud strategy, customers who work with these partners have access to the know-how and technology to build a long-term cloud computing strategy.”

For more information about Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, visit https://www.redhat.com/rhev. For more information about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.

About Red Hat, Inc.

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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