Red Hat Enterprise Linux Leadership: An Update

The past months have been an exciting time for Red Hat’s infrastructure offerings with new products and services rolling out faster than ever before, providing customers and partners with an increasingly compelling environment for building and deploying IT solutions. Perhaps more than anything, these new offerings combine to emphasize the leadership position we hold in the market for open source solutions in the operating system, virtualization, management, middleware, and cloud arenas. No other vendor can match our strength and depth of open source offerings.

It’s hard to believe we’re fast approaching the 10th anniversary of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which continues to maintain its innovative edge. Common across all we do – and consistent throughout Red Hat’s decade in the enterprise – is our commitment to put customers first by delivering choice, value, and innovation. Here are a few recent examples:

• Last week we announced we’ve extended the life cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 to 10 years. This was done in response to customer and partner demand, reflecting the widespread adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

• In December 2011, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 was released, delivering an impressive collection of new features and hardware enablement.

• Certification of hardware systems on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 has grown five-fold in the last 12 months, marking the fastest ecosystem growth of a new Red Hat Enterprise Linux release in our history.

• Today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux boasts nearly 8,000 applications from 1,500 ISVs. It enjoys comprehensive support across a broad spectrum of ISVs, reflecting its continued growth and wide usage profiles.

• We now have more than 3,000 certified hardware platforms, ranging from servers and workstations to storage and mainframes. The world’s leading x86-based OEM suppliers have certified their hardware with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with several of them marketing hundreds of certified systems.

• Red Hat continues to lead with more contributions to the Linux kernel than any other vendor. And we’re on track to extend that leadership with the development – in collaboration with our partners and the open source community – of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, which is already underway in our labs.

• And, of course, updated versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 – as well as Fedora – are also in the works!

For customers and partners, our extensive ecosystem provides a comprehensive selection of hardware and software application options for IT deployments. In fact, our revenue growth for 39 consecutive, completed quarters shows the strength of interest in our products and solutions.

Our commitment to provide the latest technologies and largest certification portfolio is an ongoing process. Undertaking certification of the Oracle database on Red Hat Enterprise Linux using Oracle’s published ‘self-certification’ process illustrates our ongoing dedication to providing a robust certification portfolio. For more than five years, Oracle has certified its databases on Red Hat Enterprise Linux by reviewing and approving the certification test results that we submit to them. Now, we await Oracle’s response to our August 2011 submission of full certification test results of the Oracle 11gR2 database on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

Similarly, we publish a self-certification process for our hardware partners so they can certify their systems with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Using our hardware certification process, Oracle requested and was granted certification of 10 Oracle servers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. In addition, Oracle recently certified Java SE 6 and 7 (32- and 64-bit) on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Given our development leadership of new technologies that benefit database and high-end application environments, we are committed to the shared Red Hat and Oracle customer base and fully expect Oracle’s certification of the Oracle 11gR2 database on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.

We continue to lead in areas beyond enterprise Linux and the kernel. Future blogs will highlight our CloudForms and OpenShift cloud offerings; new Red Hat Storage software products; the exciting release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0; Enterprise Messaging, Realtime and Grid (MRG) 2.1; and advances in our JBoss middleware portfolio. Watch this space!