Red Hat expands enterprise offering
Published: 23 Sep 2003 16:40 BST
Linux distributor Red Hat on Tuesday announced plans to offer additional open-source software to expand its presence in large companies.
The software maker announced the Open Source Architecture, an outline and statement of direction for introducing additional programs on top of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system, such as application development, clustering and systems management tools.
Red Hat's software runs chiefly on Intel-based servers, though the company's coming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 operating system will run also on IBM mainframes and on systems built on Intel's new Itanium processor. Red Hat is taking on companies such as Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, which sells servers running with Unix, on which Linux is based.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 is due in early October, according to the company.
Typically, companies have to acquire software from multiple companies in order to assemble Linux-based server systems. Those products aren't always compatible and can be troublesome to install and manage, said Paul Cormier, executive vice president of engineering at Red Hat.
"With the enterprise line, we solved a lot of problems that were inherent in Linux that were really pronounced in the enterprise such as multiple versions, with no focus on binary compatibility. We have set out to solve that," said Cormier.
Tuesday's announcement is seen as a step by Red Hat to branch out into the enterprise software market, and to fight the notion that the company is, in effect, a proprietary software maker.
Cormier said that Red Hat has worked with industry groups, such as the Apache Software Foundation and the Eclipse IDE development community, to make sure that the company's planned products adhered to industry standards.
The company plans to initially focus on server virtualisation, which allows companies to quickly add new servers and applications, and systems management tools. Cormier said that early next year Red Hat will introduce clustering software for joining servers running its Linux operating system. Java application server software and virtualisation tools will be available from Red Hat by midyear.
Red Hat has not announced pricing for the new products.
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