IBM and Red Hat announce alliance for Linux

RESEARCH TRIANGLE, NC, February 18, 1999, Red Hat® Software, Inc. announced today that it has entered an alliance with IBM to deliver, via IBM Business Partners, high-performance IBM systems running Official Red Hat Linux.

IBM and Red Hat will work collaboratively to optimize IBM personal system hardware for running Red Hat Linux, providing customers with powerful and reliable enterprise and e-business solutions on the Red Hat Linux platform. Both companies will work together to provide enterprise-level technical support and will conduct joint marketing to enterprise customers. As a first demonstration of high performing e-business solutions based on Red Hat Linux and IBM hardware, several high traffic Red Hat web sites will be powered by the award winning Netfinity line of servers.

Under the agreement, a development lab will be established to maximize performance, reliability, and security for Red Hat Linux on IBM server and client systems, including Netfinity servers, PC 300 Commercial Desktops, IntelliStations, and ThinkPads. In addition to contributing developer expertise, Red Hat will also perform hardware certification testing and provide dedicated customer training.

"IBM has long been the leader in powerful, reliable computing solutions," said Bob Young, CEO, Red Hat Software. "This is an important milestone in the rapidly growing acceptance of Linux."

More than 10 million users currently run the Linux operating system. According to IDC Research, Linux was the fastest-growing server operating environment in 1998, capturing more than 17 percent of all server operating system shipments. A new survey in Linuxworld showed that 74 percent of those polled cite Red Hat as the most recognized Linux vendor.

"Our customers are asking for Linux solutions," said Bill McCracken, general manager of marketing and strategy, IBM Personal Systems Group. "The Red Hat alliance demonstrates IBM's commitment to the open-source movement and to provide our customers with an unmatched range of platforms, operating systems, solutions and services."

"The Linux community has faced a number of real and imagined barriers to its acceptance within the enterprise; IBM is helping Red Hat to break some of those barriers down," said Bill Peterson, Research Manager at IDC. "One of the barriers to Linux in the enterprise is the availability of technical support. IBM's support organization is legendary within the industry and IDC believes that with this announcement the technical support argument against Linux in the enterprise becomes moot. Red Hat is already the leader in commercial Linux shipments and through its numerous recently announced partnerships further solidifies itself as one the top choices for enterprise Linux computing."

About Linux

Linux is the cooperatively developed POSIX-oriented, multi-user, multi-tasking operating system used worldwide. Linux is strongly differentiated from virtually all other operating systems because it is "open source'' software, with the source code freely available to all users. Unlike binary-only operating systems that restrict access to the source code, Linux benefits from a worldwide community of highly experienced programmers and technically savvy academics who have the access to enhance and improve the system. Linux is used as an exceptional-value, fully functional UNIX workstation for Internet servers and other applications. Red Hat Linux is maintained as "freely distributable" software available from many sites on the Internet.

About Red Hat ® Software, Inc.

Founded in 1994, Red Hat, Inc. is based in Research Triangle Park, NC, where it builds and maintains the award-winning Red Hat Linux operating system. Working in cooperation with a huge development team of research, academic, and commercial software developers over the Internet, Red Hat's goal is to build the most accessible and advanced operating system available anywhere. Red Hat Linux for Intel®, DEC Alpha(TM), and Sun SPARC® platforms continues to gain recognition in the computer industry: From 1996 to the present, Red Hat Linux was named InfoWorld's Product of the Year for three straight years, was given a Productivity accolade in Software Development's "Jolt" Awards, was named an Environment/Desktop finalist in the Ziff-Davis European Excellence Awards, won the editor's choice awards from both the Linux Journal and Australian Personal Computing Magazines, and won the "Just Plain Cool" award.

About IBM

IBM is the world's largest technology company. For more information about IBM, please visit http://www.ibm.com/.

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. INTEL is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation. SPARC is a registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. Products bearing the SPARC trademarks are based on an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. ALPHA is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation.