From early Enterprise Linux years to the open source compute platform of choice for today and tomorrow's physical, virtual, and cloud IT environments

RALEIGH, NC, May 15 — Red Hat, Inc., the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today celebrates the 10^th anniversary of its flagship solution, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which has transformed the deployment of business-critical applications for IT organizations around the globe. With the introduction of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system in May 2002, Red Hat dramatically changed the software industry with the first-ever open source software subscription business, spurring the adoption of Linux across the enterprise.

Continuously bringing increased levels of IT infrastructure efficiency, Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides solutions to real-world challenges for the most demanding enterprise customers. From the financial sector to government, telecommunications to media, logistics to retail, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is relied upon to power many of the heaviest IT workloads in business securely and reliably.

"Red Hat is thankful to the worldwide Linux community and all our partners, and is proud to recognize the achievements we've made with Red Hat Enterprise Linux," said Paul Cormier, president of products and technologies at Red Hat. "Building on the last decade, today Red Hat enables the most advanced IT environments in organizations that offer products and services that truly enhance the way we work and live. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a great example of making disruptive technology an industry standard."

Key milestones of Red Hat Enterprise Linux include:

• Launching the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) program in 1997, a valuable offering for training IT staff on Linux, that helped spread the use of open source in businesses by giving Red Hat customers access to a growing pool of resources with proven skills;
• Shifted business focus to the enterprise IT user by shipping an enterprise-grade Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system in May 2002;
• Introduction of the first successful open source software subscription business model focusing on reliability and stability, attracting leading hardware and software partners to port to Red Hat Enterprise Linux;
• Merged Red Hat Linux and the Fedora Linux Project to create the Fedora Project, a community collaboration of Red Hat employees and volunteers and a powerful incubator of open source technologies for Red Hat Enterprise Linux;
• Development of a 2-20X price/performance increase for enterprise customers with significant cost savings, record-setting performance benchmarks, usage in high-performing super-computers, and integration of security and virtualization technologies; and
• Established Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the premier open source operating system for software and hardware certification and support with more than 9,000 applications and 1,400 ISVs and more than 3,000 certified hardware platforms today, ranging from servers and workstations to storage and mainframes certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

"Red Hat broke new ground not only for its own benefit, but for a multitude of other business entities that offer commercial support for open source-based products," said Al Gillen, program VP, System Software, IDC. "Try and imagine a world today if Red Hat had not successfully introduced the concept of enterprise-class subscription-based support for an open source product."

Through its community-powered innovation and partner ecosystem strength, Red Hat connects with technology leaders to bring proven, high-performing Linux solutions to our joint customers.

"The growth of cloud computing requires greater choice and innovation for the datacenter," said Doug Fisher, vice president of the Systems Software Division at Intel. "To help meet these needs, Intel and Red Hat have collaborated for years on Linux and open virtualization, bringing innovative datacenter technologies to market. Intel congratulates Red Hat on the tenth anniversary of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. We look forward to our continuing collaboration and innovation in key areas such as open, trusted, and federated clouds, as well as mission-critical platforms based on open source software and Intel Architecture."

"For more than 10 years, Dell and Red Hat have helped bring open source standards and solutions to the data center," said Gerry Hackett, vice president, Server Platform and Engineering, Dell. "We congratulate Red Hat on 10 years of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and we look forward to continuing to provide customers with innovative joint solutions that lower total cost of ownership and increase return on investment."

"Red Hat changed the way customers purchase software, pioneering community-driven product development and offering an open source subscription model," said Doug Oathout, vice president, Alliances and Channel Partner Marketing, Enterprise Group, HP. "Our most recent collaboration, Red Hat Enterprise Linux on HP ProLiant Gen8, provides unparalleled levels of scalability and performance, and showcases our commitment to innovation and the open-source ecosystem."

"Red Hat's flagship operating system has helped change market dynamics and proved the feasibility of open-source platforms for enterprise applications," said Helge Deller, head of SAP LinuxLabs, SAP AG. "SAP's goal is to make businesses run better. A key part of that goal includes offering flexible infrastructure choices to meet customers' needs. This enables customers to get the most value out of their business applications, which are key drivers for growth and profit. SAP has always been a technology leader, and was the first to offer software that ran mission-critical ERP operations on Linux. In partnership with Red Hat, we help customers identify where they can leverage the power of open-source solutions reliably to drive down costs and improve operational efficiency."

Future Direction

CIOs for a broad spectrum of organizations depend on Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a foundation for their enterprise architecture capable of meeting their needs now and in the future. Red Hat Enterprise Linux powers many of the world's largest public and private cloud, and is the foundation on which many leading new breed of cloud and Software-as-a-Service applications are built and run.

Red Hat's strategic plans for Red Hat Enterprise Linux include:

• continuing to deliver a highly reliable, feature-rich and cost-effective operating system infrastructure;
• forming the basis of open hybrid clouds, delivering a consistent environment allowing applications to migrate easily between on-premise and public cloud environments with a consistent development and management platform, with industry-leading multi-tenacy, resource management, and Quality-of-Service management capabilities; and
• expanding the use of Linux for many types of workloads – legacy and next-generation, inside and outside the enterprise, on-premise and hybrid – to accommodate the explosive workload demands resulting from social, big data, and mobile applications.

For more information on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and future strategic direction, join Red Hat executives for a virtual press conference webcast at 12 noon ET on May 15. The webcast will also be available for replay. To register for the live broadcast or to access the replay, visit here.

Additional Resources

• Red Hat Celebrates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Year Anniversary Interactive Timeline
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux

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About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions and an S&P 500 company, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with more than 70 offices spanning the globe. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with cloud, virtualization, management, storage and service-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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Source: Red Hat, Inc.