Red Hat Announces Broad ISV Ecosystem is Virtualization-Ready

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced its virtualization agenda and roadmap for 2009, including confirmation that its broad ecosystem of applications tested and certified to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux are certified to run in a Red Hat virtualized platform with no modifications. Red Hat offers a broad ecosystem of certified applications, enabling expanded flexibility and choice for customers.

"Testing and certifying an application to run on a software or hardware platform is often a lengthy and expensive process," said Robert Sutor, vice president open source and Linux, IBM. "Red Hat's verification that IBM software certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux is also ready for deployment in a Red Hat virtualized platform allows our customers to more quickly and easily take advantages of the benefits of Red Hat virtualization technologies."

The Red Hat ISV Partner Program includes over 2,200 vendors and over 3,000 applications certified on Red Hat technologies, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform. With today's news, Red Hat ISV partners are ensured through an Application Binary Interface (ABI) guarantee that their certified applications are capable of running under Red Hat virtualization technology as a result of Red Hat's unique ability to tightly couple the open source operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux and hypervisor layers. Red Hat provides assurance that the kernel-level ABI won't change with major platform releases, allowing software and device drivers to continue running unchanged. Once certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, an application is also compatible from a user-space ABI perspective.

"Applications that are certified to run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux in bare metal deployments are now able to be deployed in virtual environments," said Matt Mattox, director, ISV Alliances at Red Hat. "Our commitment to compatibility between conventional and virtual deployments for our 3,000 application-strong ISV ecosystem provides operational choice, flexibility and efficiency for our customers."

"Through our partnership with Red Hat, we've been able to certify our broad array of mission-critical information security and management solutions once, enabling our customers to deploy them consistently across a range of physical and virtual platforms," said John Magee, vice president of Product Marketing, Symantec. "The ability for joint customers to be assured of compatibility with Red Hat's virtualization solutions with no added steps required of partners speaks to the flexibility and value of both Red Hat's partnerships and technologies."

"Our customers turn to BMC's BSM platform to reduce the complexity and cost of managing their entire IT infrastructure," said Kia Behnia, chief architect at BMC. "Red Hat's certify once, deploy anywhere partner pledge allows us to deliver on our own promise to provide solutions that can be easily deployed on both physical or virtual hardware and allow our customers to achieve rapid return on investment in technologies such as virtualization."

With Red Hat's unique position to drive technology innovation and development in both the operating system and hypervisor layers, it provides assurance that if an ISV or customer experiences any issues specific to virtualization, Red Hat will work to ensure compatibility with both the hypervisor and operating system layers.

"CA is committed to supporting the broadest array of virtualization platforms," said Roger Pilc, corporate senior vice president and general manager of CA's Infrastructure Management and Data Center Automation business unit. "Knowing that our solutions, such as CA Data Center Automation Manager, will be compatible with Red Hat's virtualization technology will enable CA to help our mutual customers achieve greater agility, efficiency and service quality."

"Micro Focus helps customers extend and integrate existing applications to meet new and emerging business needs in cost-effective ways," said Stuart McGill, CTO at Micro Focus. "Our partnership with Red Hat offers greater flexibility to our customers so they can deploy cutting-edge technology like Red Hat's virtualization solutions more quickly and easily."

"SteelEye and Red Hat partner to protect our customers' critical applications and data, whether they exist on physical systems or within virtual machines," said Bob Williamson, executive vice president, Product Management and Business Development at SteelEye. "With Red Hat's compatible operation across these two platforms, our mutual customers are able to confidently and seamlessly deploy cutting-edge solutions that take full advantage of Red Hat's virtualization technology more quickly and easily."

"To help our partners and customers ease the deployment challenges of heterogeneous virtualization solutions, we are expanding our partnership with Red Hat to leverage their Enterprise Linux technology," said Ramin Sayar, senior director of Products, Software and Solutions at HP. "We are also helping customers reduce costs and improve the value of virtualization technology by using Red Hat Enterprise Linux to develop virtual appliances for HP's Business Technology Optimization software portfolio."

To learn more about this announcement and Red Hat's virtualization agenda and roadmap, join the Red Hat webcast, which will be broadcast live at 11 a.m. ET on February 23, 2009. The webcast will also be available for replay. To join, visit www.redhat.com/promo/webcast/223.

For more news about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com. Visit Red Hat at VMWorld, Europe, February 24-26 in Cannes.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, 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 five 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 applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including 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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