Red Hat's Open Source Architecture Evolves to Reduce Infrastructure Costs; Virtualization, Stateless Linux and Developer Enablement Will Be Red Hat's Core Technology Focus Areas for 2006-2007.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source to the enterprise, today announced its primary technology plans for 2006 through 2007. The company's core focus will be to continue to reduce IT infrastructure costs for customers. Red Hat sees virtualization, stateless Linux and developer enablement as the key levers to reduce costs by increasing organizational efficiency and agility.

In 2003 Red Hat launched Red Hat Enterprise Linux v. 3 and with that release the company's long-term Open Source Architecture strategy. Since then Red Hat has delivered on key features of the strategy: reliability, high performance, security, scalable systems, identity management, virtualized storage solutions and a broad application and hardware ecosystem. The original architecture helped make Red Hat Enterprise Linux the leading open source platform for commercial IT deployments. The second phase of the architecture defines the technologies that will keep Red Hat Enterprise Linux as the leading commercial open source solution and continue to drive down IT costs.

"Deploying Linux two years ago was a sound technical decision for many organizations. Performance was better than proprietary solutions, and systems were very reliable and secure. We are proud to have achieved those important milestones for open source consumers with the support of our partners and the community," said Brian Stevens, Chief Technology Officer at Red Hat. "Technologies are now emerging that will make the deployment of open source software incredibly strategic for customers in the coming years. Virtualization and stateless Linux will be the levers for accomplishing amazing operational efficiency and agility. We will also focus resources on providing a state-of-the-art development environment to support open source and partner development efforts. In combination, these and other emerging technologies will ensure that Red Hat open source solutions offer a compelling IT infrastructure, from development through to deployment."

Virtualization

Expected to be released in late 2006, the next major release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux will feature a fully integrated server virtualization capability. Working with the Xen community and partners, Red Hat's development efforts in this space will ensure maximum system utilitization and availability by optimizing the core operating system platform for virtualized environments. By integrating the technology with Red Hat's existing storage virtualization and system management capabilities - Red Hat Global File System and Red Hat Network - customers will benefit from a complete solution that can be applied to real business problems to reduce costs and improve operational efficiency.

In the theme of simplicity and efficiency, Red Hat's pricing model for server virtualization technology will be designed to give customers the freedom to run an unlimited number of virtualized instances for a flat subscription price. Customers will be able to enjoy the benefits of a dynamic virtualized environment without the need to track complex pricing models.

"Virtualization is rapidly emerging as a solution for several critical problems experienced by today's IT customers," said Tony Iams, Vice President of System Software Research at Ideas International. "It helps users maximize the utilization of server and storage resources, and opens new avenues to increased system availability. Virtualization also dramatically simplifies developing, testing and provisioning new applications, which helps administrators manage the complexity of their infrastructures even as they undergo high rates of growth. It is exciting to see Red Hat and its partners collaborating to drive open source virtualization technology into the mainstream."

Stateless Linux

Stateless Linux extends Red Hat's IT cost reduction efforts to laptop and desktop deployments. With stateless Linux the personality and data that make an individual machine unique is moved to the network. Through intelligent backup and update agents, the user's personality and data are cached to any local machine the user chooses. This allows the mobility and flexibility of a standard desktop but with the administration costs of a thin client. For administration, maintenance and deployment costs are minimized. For users, the availability of the data is independent of the health or reliability of a single machine. A user's downtime is limited to the time it takes to receive a replacement machine.

Developer Enablement

Red Hat will work with partners, the community and customers to help increase the quality and time-to-market of software development projects, through the leverage of open source tools and processes. "Some of our largest customers are beginning to realize that a combination of open source development tools and distributed development processes, mirroring how the open source community operates, are yielding significant increases in software quality even while decreasing time-to-market," said Paul Cormier, Executive Vice President of Engineering at Red Hat. "Our experience with distributed software development ideally positions us to help customers win in this new environment."

Red Hat's specific plans for enabling developers will include continued investment in open source tools such as Eclipse, SystemTAP, Frysk and others, as well as an expansion of developer-focused content, services and training targeted at commercial application developers. Red Hat will also begin to leverage its substantial testing and certification experience to help customers decrease their internal platform validation efforts, as the desire to validate more open source components increase.

Customers and partners will have access to technology progress made as part of the Evolution of Open Source Architecture in calendar 2006 and 2007. Previews of technologies discussed are available now in Fedora Core: http://www.fedora.redhat.com

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading open source and Linux provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with middleware, applications and management solutions. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat's open source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com

Forward-Looking Statements 

Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for the company, including statements containing the words "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," "will," and similar expressions, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: the factors discussed in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC (a copy of which may be accessed through the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov), reliance upon strategic relationships, management of growth, the possibility of undetected software errors, the risks of economic downturns generally, and in Red Hat's industry specifically, the risks associated with competition and competitive pricing pressures and the viability of the Internet. In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release.