Red Hat bands with open-source allies

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The Red Hat Exchange announcement accompanied the debut of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5. That product will come in two versions: the basic RHEL 5 and the higher-end RHEL 5 Advanced Platform.

RHEL 5 costs $349 per year for a server with up to two processor sockets and basic support, which includes 30 days of phone support during business hours and a year of Web-based support. A standard subscription costs $799 per year and includes a year of phone support during business hours. Premium support costs $1,299 per year.

Red Hat charges a big notch more for the Advanced Platform version--$1,499 per year for standard support and $2,499 for premium.

The prices, which match those of the earlier RHEL ES and AS versions, may sound steep for open-source software that can be obtained for free. But Red Hat prefers to draw the comparison with the fees customers might have to pay for commercial software.

"The value that used to come from four or five vendors now comes in one open-source platform, saving tens of thousands of dollars for each server," Cormier said.

RHEL and RHEL Advanced Platform both include the Xen virtualization software, which lets a single computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously in separate partitions called virtual machines. But RHEL 5 Advanced Platform has some extra advantages: It can run as many virtual machines as desired, compared to a limit of four for regular RHEL 5, and its connections to storage are virtualized as well, letting virtual machines be moved from one machine to another more easily.

Red Hat's chief Linux competitor is Novell, which has kept its Suse Linux Enterprise Server product relevant even if it hasn't dethroned Red Hat.

Justin Steinman, Novell's director of marketing for Linux and open-platform solutions, believes his company is getting ahead. "If you look at the success over the last 120 days, you'll see Novell is growing our Linux business at a significant rate, and we're getting some very significant customer wins," he said. Among them are Peugeot, which is installing Linux on 20,000 desktop computers, and HSBC, which is standardizing on Suse Linux and obtaining the software through a Novell partnership with Microsoft.

But Red Hat believes it's on the right track. "For the past two years, we've engaged customers, partners and the (open-source programming) community in trying to get to the bottom of what they wanted and needed," Cormier said. "They want value in software."

[ismetd]

The-road-ahead looks good for RedHat, but...

I (think i'm not alone on this) would like to see that Fedora merged into RedHat RHEL, rename it something like RedHat RHEL Beta, (look Google for inspirations, heck i've been using Gmail-beta ever since it was launched.) this way, at least it will give new users (kids that Ubuntu is attracting now) a name recognition right away. and a message that says, "I am RedHat RHEL Beta, you better get to know me now, because I am going to be next-RHEL, and that will help you landing your next job.

[ismetd]

and also..

it's confusing that way, when people speak about Fedora they rarely mention RedHat, the next guy who hears Fedora 1st time would think of it as just another distro, and would go with distros which currently has more buzz. and what about CentOS? comeooon guys at RedHat, I am sure RedHat can-get (and it needs) better karma by distributing RHEL for free, instead of CentOS doing that without even giving some credit.

[Razzl]

"FEZ"

Cross a red hat with a fedora and you get a "fez". It would be a whole lot easier to pronounce, too...