Partners are very important to Red Hat and JBoss’ continued momentum in the IT market.
We have a long history of partnering with technology leaders like IBM, Intel and Cisco. We even have a history of forming relationships with unlikely partners. One common thread that links these partners to us is their desire to align themselves with the open standards and the organic growth that has carried Red Hat to where we are today.

One partner that has embraced open standards since its inception has been Dell. In fact Dell’s principal Linux architect, Matt Domsch, continues to be an elected member of the Fedora Board. Dell and Red Hat are both committed to open standards which allow customers to free themselves from proprietary lock-in. It is what brings customer choice IN and ushers OUT the stranglehold that IT vendors can have on their customers—ultimately, in our opinion, keeping them from innovating and carving out their competitive advantage in the marketplace.

This is where Dell and Red Hat continue to find common ground. Both companies embrace open standards and have built their businesses on providing non-proprietary solutions to drive value in the data center.

One area in particular where we are deepening our partnership is with our JBoss division. We are seeing momentum in the adoption of the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio which we expect to continue to strengthen. And our customers are asking us for a complete enterprise solution stack, including an integrated hardware set that plays to the strengths of the JBoss product portfolio. So it is no surprise that we’ve turned to Dell to deliver the value that our customers have come to expect.

Dell has built their empire on delivering high-value, customizable hardware, selling directly to their customers at an attractive price point. Our customers have already taken advantage of the combination of JBoss Enterprise Middleware running on Dell.

Over 40 joint customers have successfully deployed JBoss on Dell PowerEdge Servers. From financial services, healthcare and manufacturing companies to the public sector and retail organizations, customers are embracing this partnership. We believe that combining JBoss and Dell lets customers simplify IT by improving application performance, lowering security risks and easing operational complexity. The Travel Channel and Booz Allen Hamilton are just two of our customers that are taking advantage of the value and performance offered through this hardware and middleware combination.

Stay tuned for more information on our expanding partnership with Dell. In the meantime be sure to check out our Dell partner page with links to whitepapers, webinars and email alerts.

We’ve already established that you can grow revenues by investing in an open source practice. Take a look at our most recent earnings which happen to be a bright spot in the down economy. Our message is resonating with customers: carve costs out of the datacenter and bring value in. Our channel partners appear to have gotten the message too.

We’ve seen our reseller partner program grow substantially in FY09 and as we set out to tackle FY10 we are committed to bringing additional value to our partners in an effort to help them realize a profit by selling Red Hat and JBoss to their customers. Just one of the many ways we are doing this is through training.

This Spring Red Hat is going on a road tour and bringing our world-class Sales Training directly to partners across North America. Targeted at Red Hat Advanced Business Partners, the training sessions are the same that we provide to our own sales reps at the start of their career. The sessions are product training from the “How do you sell it” point of view—which we believe is the most important training there is for our partners. The two day session will equip our partners with The Red Hat Value Proposition, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Global File System and Virtualization information, as well as training on Red Hat’s middleware products such as JBoss, MetaMatrix and our SOA strategy. Upon completion participants will earn the Red Hat Sales Certified Partner classification.

Check out the schedule and visit The Red Hat Partner Center for more information.

Dallas, TX – May 5-6, 2009
North East – Fall 2009

We are committed to empowering resellers of open source solutions so they can provide the highest levels of service, support and value to their customers. For more information on how you can join the Red Hat Partner Program and take advantage of Red Hat’s training, click here or for general inquiries feel free to email us at na-partner helpdesk@redhat.com.

It’s certainly not news to anyone that Red Hat and Intel have been closely working hand-in-hand for many years to offer high-performance, low-cost alternatives to proprietary IT solutions. Red Hat Enterprise Linux combined with Intel processors and system components have essentially redefined the meaning of “commodity computing.”

The most recent result of this partnership centers around today’s announcement of the availability of Intel’s latest Xeon (Nehalem) processor. This processor provides significant new capabilities that, as a result of our collaboration during its development, are fully supported by Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, which was released in January. We believe that the combination surpasses the capabilities of proprietary high-end systems, while offering true affordability.

There are two primary areas where Intel’s new Xeon processor, combined with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3, offers customers the opportunity to meet their computing needs while reducing costs:

• Scalability/Performance. Virtualization enhancements provide greater scalability and performance, and allow for the virtualization of a wide range of workloads, even those that are I/O intensive.
• Energy efficiency. Support for Greener IT features result in lower power consumption and cooling requirements.

In short, this is really all about doing more at a lower price-point. Let’s dig into a few technical details around scalability/performance and power efficiency enhancements.

Until recently, system performance was primarily driven by new processors operating at increasingly high frequencies — that is the good news. The bad news was a seemingly insatiable appetite for power and cooling — all driving up datacenter costs. A common solution to this problem has been to use virtualization to consolidate workloads. So, Red Hat and Intel worked closely together to deliver enterprise-caliber virtualization in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, which customers have been successfully deploying since the product was released in early 2007.
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Back in October 2007 we announced that our ISV catalog passed the 3,000 mark . And as of last November we stated that we actually have 3,400 certified applications.

This is exciting—we point out the number of certified applications to demonstrate our firm foothold in the overall software ecosystem. Its also a validation point for the proliferation of open source, our ISV catalog has experienced impressive growth—customers want applications that work on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Simply put, its a symbiotic relationship. A strong ISV catalog is good for Red Hat and Red Hat’s growing ISV catalog presents opportunities for software vendors.

So now that we’ve got all of these application vendors its time for us to look for ways to enhance the ecosystem. Already, we provide many opportunities for co-marketing and ecosystem support, but we want to do more. This is a very important stakeholder group for Red Hat and we want to reward this commitment to Red Hat. In the coming months you can expect us to look for more ways to facilitate, market and promote our application vendor community; to bring new business opportunities to these vendors; and to streamline their interactions with Red Hat.

Our ISVs need to get as much value as possible from their partnership with Red Hat. We plan to provide improved tools that will facilitate marketing, business opportunities and ISV engagement. We invite you to take a look at our partner program, participate and give us feedback.

To learn more about Red Hat’s ISV Partner Program, or the applications certified on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, click here.

Today we are celebrating a momentous occasion. Ten years ago today, Red Hat and IBM began our global collaborative partnership to expand the use of enterprise solutions on Linux. It was a small but important start to announce that IBM would run Red Hat Linux on its industry-standard systems. Back in 1999, Red Hat was on the eve of its IPO, and IBM was testing the waters of Linux. Only 10 million users ran the Linux operating system at the time, according to IDC Research quoted in our original partnership announcement.

The global partnership has broadly expanded over the years, and today delivers combined solutions driven by rich joint technology innovations. Together, Red Hat and IBM are deeply penetrating the mission-critical infrastructures of many of the world’s Fortune 500 companies, delivering value to our joint customers through the combination of open source solutions, comprehensive services, solid platforms and technology leadership. Red Hat stands as a Strategic Alliance partner for IBM — the top ranking partnership category — and IBM is a Premier OEM partner for Red Hat.

Our alliance helped spur broad-based industry Linux adoption, driving the one of the fastest growth rates for mainstream operating systems in the past decade. As of 3Q08, IDC’s Server Tracker indicated that Linux accounts for 14% of the overall server market. (rolling 4Q average). Red Hat is the top commercial contributor to the Linux kernel, and IBM is one of the world’s top Linux evangelists—the third largest contributor to the Linux kernel — and runs Red Hat Enterprise Linux across all of our servers and 500 middleware programs.
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One of the stated goals for Red Hat’s channel team is to move more business through our channel ecosystem. We are working everyday to make that happen and to ensure that our partners and by extension their customers are successful with our full portfolio of open source solutions. One of the ways we are accomplishing that is by working with valued partners like Vizuri.
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Today we made an announcement that I think is going to generate a lot of interest. Red Hat and Microsoft are working together to ensure virtualization interoperability. This is big news. Companies deploy virtualization to make their infrastructure more efficient. By allowing Windows Server to run as a guest on Red Hat virtualization, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to run as a guest on Windows virtualization, customers gain new level of compatibility, interoperability and support. This is a major step forward for the industry.

Both Microsoft and Red Hat now have the capability to provide complete end-to-end virtualization solutions, from hardware to operating system, on the two industry-leading operating environments, which IDC says represent about 80 percent of today’s virtualized operating systems. This breaks through a major hurdle to more widespread adoption of virtualization.

Of course, it is also big news because it is rare that these two companies publicly work together. The companies continue to compete vigorously. But virtualization interoperability is very high on customers’ wish lists, and I’m pleased both companies have been able to respond in this cooperative fashion.

But for the record, it isn’t the first time Red Hat and Microsoft have cooperated. For example, Microsoft has recently joined the open source AMQP high performance messaging project, of which Red Hat was a founding member. Red Hat customers are already deploying AMQP technology with Red Hat’s Enterprise MRG product. The messaging element (the “M” in MRG) provides messaging up to 100 times faster than some legacy technologies.

One of the big questions on the minds of many members of the open source community is whether Red Hat has compromised its ideals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Red Hat’s growth, and its differentiation, come from its belief in and commitment to, the open source community model. It is our view – and this view is institutionalized throughout our company – that we have to serve the community, as well as our customers, shareholders, and employees. The moment we stop doing so, we eliminate the differentiation which drives our growth.

So we undertook this interoperability effort with strict adherence to our principles. The companies signed two agreements: One in which Red Hat joined the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP), which validates Windows Server guests running on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies, and the other which certifies Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests running on Windows Server Hyper-V.

The agreements contain no patent or open source license components. There are no financial clauses beyond simple certification testing fees. These are straightforward certification and validation agreements.

I am excited about this step forward for the industry. And I am pleased we did it without compromising our commitment to open source. That’s leadership we can be proud of.

To find out more, join our webcast at 11 a.m. Eastern Time on February 16, or check out the recorded version if you miss the live presentation. You can also get information here.

Today, JasperSoft, a leading Open Source Business Intelligence software vendor and a Red Hat Exchange RHX partner, announced that it has secured $12.5 million in venture funding and we are pleased to be a part of that group of investors.

This investment is part of a strategy to help support a thriving open source ecosystem through RHX. Our goal is to present open source solution sets that reach well beyond the OS and solve real problems for customers. Our investment and partnership in JasperSoft will help us achieve that goal by expanding the opportunities for open source software and leveraging the value inherent in all open source solutions.

We congratulate JasperSoft on their continued success and are proud to demonstrate our leadership in the marketplace by serving as an ambassador to open source technologies and by making sound investments in our partners.

Red Hat Exchange (RHX) has been working with its partners to extend the enterprise open source community by bringing more of our partners’ software into Fedora and EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux). Zimbra has long seen the value of making its software easily accessible by the large community of Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux users, so it recently leveraged RHX to help get useful community feedback on a license issue.

Earlier this month, Zimbra announced on its forums that in collaboration with Red Hat and the Fedora community, it made a change to the Yahoo! Public License (YPL) Version 1.0 in order to meet Fedora licensing requirements. Red Hat Exchange was an integral part in helping Zimbra advance this initiative.

Here’s the background: To be included in Fedora, software must either have a license certified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) (http://www.opensource.org/licenses), or terms that meet the open source definition as outlined by the OSI (http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd). Zimbra is licensed under the YPL which has not yet been submitted for OSI approval. » Read more

Today, Red Hat Exchange (RHX) is welcoming three new partners to the program: Colosa, Inc., Continuent Inc. and Likewise Software. Each of these partners provides applications which broaden the current scope of the RHX software categories. Colosa, Inc., developer of ProcessMaker, brings open source workflow and business process management, while Continuent offers a multi-master approach to database replication. And because today’s IT environments are heterogeneous, we’ve added Likewise, which enables the integration of Linux, UNIX and Mac systems into Microsoft’s Active Directory. Visit rhx.redhat.com to see our new partners and to find other trusted software solutions, powered by open source.
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