WRAL Tech Wire

Red Hat Expands Enterprise Open Source Efforts With New Rlease

Red Hat has reached what it calls a "major milestone" in the company's long-term strategy of delivering an open source architecture to the enterprise.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 is now available for an increased range of IT deployments and spanning seven hardware architectures.

The new release provides a stable operating system platform, Red Hat says, enabling customers to realize the benefits of open source solutions across their complete computing infrastructure ... from the desktop to the largest server.

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 marks a significant achievement in the maturation of open source," said Paul Cormier, executive vice president of engineering at Red Hat in Raleigh. "--This second generation solution from Red Hat will strengthen Red Hat's global foothold in the enterprise and eliminate the need for proprietary Unix."

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 was developed in close collaboration with customers, hardware manufacturers and software partners, the company says. It includes numerous features, such as a Native Posix Threading Library for multi-threading applications.

Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata, told NewsFactor that the improved threading makes Red Hat more competitive.

"One of the things that Sun has promoted as a strength of [Unix OS] Solaris is high-level threading capability, which translates into Java performance," Haff said. He also said the improvements will help Red Hat counter recent moves by Germany-based SuSE, an aggressive competitor in the mainframe support market segment.

Supported hardware architectures include Intel x86 and Itanium, AMD64, IBM zSeries, iSeries, pSeries and S/390.

Adecco USA, the nation's largest staffing and HR solutions company, is just one of many companies using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, the company announced.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 is available now as part of an annual subscription that includes Red Hat Network and services. Current Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscribers can upgrade via Red Hat Network.

Red Hat OEM partners will deliver Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 in pre-configured hardware solutions in the next 30-60 days. Several ISV applications are already available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, and others have committed to be available in the near term.

For more information, visit www.redhat.com