Red Hat acquires way into Windows game
Just four days after Red Hat closed its second quarter, the company has announced the acquisition of Qumranet, an open-source virtualization company, positioning the open-source leader to close many more successful quarters to come.
Red Hat acquired Qumranet for $107 million in cash, according to the company, which is surprising, given Qumranet's comparative lack of revenue, having only released its product in September of 2007.
Such is the importance of virtualization. I'd argue that Qumranet was worth the hefty multiple.
In a statement, Red Hat claims that it "can now deliver what virtualization-only vendors cannot: a comprehensive solution integrated with the operating system, which can drive down IT costs while simultaneously enhancing the flexibility and responsiveness of IT infrastructure." Nice, but the the more interesting news embedded in the Qumranet acquisition is the Windows management technology that comes with it:
The Qumranet acquisition also extends Red Hat's virtualization solutions for managing Windows desktops. SolidICE is a high-performance, scalable desktop virtualization solution built specifically for virtual desktops, not simply a retrofit from server virtualization solutions. SolidICE is designed to enable a user's Windows or Linux desktop to run in a virtual machine that is hosted on a central server.
Qumranet has been making waves for its innovative VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure). Qumranet's SolidICE makes it easy to "offer remote PCs access to virtual desktops via a Web browser," including Windows desktops.
In other words, Red Hat just got in the Windows game without having to get its hands dirty with the Microsoft operating system.
It will be interesting to see what Red Hat will do with the proprietary Qumranet technology. I'm also looking forward to seeing how Moshe Bar and the rest of the Qumranet management team fit into Red Hat's corporate structure. (Moshe is a longtime entrepreneur who had previously been behind Qlusters.)
Finally, I still want to know why the Qumranet team decided to take its name from where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Inquiring Bible-savvy minds want to know. :-)
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
The problem with Solid ICE is you need a (real) desktop to access the (virtual) desktop. So it doesn't reduce the IT infrastructure at all, it actually makes it more complicated.
Solid ICE only makes sense if you assume the real desktop is "free" (like a remote user from home who already has a desktop) but this assumption doesn't hold in an enterprise environment, where even remote users will likely be mandated to use corporate-issued laptops for security purposes.
Once you calculate the cost of maintaining "thin" desktops and supporting virtual desktops (with all the support issues of real desktops), the ROI doesn't look so good anymore.
Also, for (local & remote) enterprise users, what you need isn't delivery of OS-level virtualization but a way to control/restrict network, application and data access. OS virtualization is there to help reduce the hardware & manageability costs, but is not the primary need.
An Application virtualization solution like the Citrix Presentation Server (aka XenApp) makes much more sense for end-user delivery. Then you can use your hypervisors to reduce the cost of implementation.
the search url data and better control of exchange process in virtualization between programs remote virtualization should have better url encrypt key security.
I suspect Microsoft would actually enjoy seeing such a solution (or rather, more of them) since it allows them to not worry so much about PHB's saying: "well, we use Linux for our servers, so why are we paying through the nose to license all these Windows desktops"?
/P
Keep your eye on Sun's open source virtualization story. I am very impressed by what they are doing.
1) xVM OpsCenter - Powerful management of servers and virtualization
2) xVM VDI - Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
3) xVM Server - Currently based on Xen, with great features added (soon to be released)
4) xVM VirtualBox - Very popular, and they just released version 2.0 today!
My predition is that VMware pricing is going to drop like a rock due to Sun's products and Red Hat's KVM product (when it is released). Once again, open source is disrupting the market!
Tristan
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by ShaunRConnolly
September 5, 2008 4:52 PM PDT
- I posted an article that ponders if this move by Red Hat is strategic or tactical.
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Reply to this comment
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(8 Comments)http://connollyshaun.blogspot.com/2008/09/red-hat-acquires-qumranet-tactical-or.html
While this move gives them control over KVM (a key virtualization technology that helps counterbalance Xen's dominance), I argue this move feels tactical and inward-facing, rather than strategic.
In my article I offer up what I would consider to be a strategic move for Red Hat.