February 18, 2009, 8:11 am
I’ve written on Red Hat before and the confidence I feel in their operational strengths. It is one of the best run companies I’ve seen. Red Hat’s leadership in the Linux space and its steadfast belief in open source software has been a key factor in Linux adoption in the enterprise. This year’s numbers with Linux capturing greater than 20% of server shipments, a major success, are due in large part to Red Hat’s competitiveness and hard work.
One thing about great companies: they pick great partners. Red Hat celebrated 10 years working with IBM today. In 1999, Red Hat had gone public and IBM was looking at Linux strategically. Since then, the dotcom bubble broke, and less prepared companies like Sun were hard hit while IBM and Red Hat are stronger than ever. In 2009, the partnership between Red Hat and IBM spans the globe, and both names are synonymous with Linux.
Today this partnership is more effective than ever because they deliver what customers want; solutions that offer the highest value for the dollar. Red Hat Linux can be found on a range of systems from x86 to Power to the mainframe meeting industry requirements for a common flexible platform across all their infrastructure. Red Hat and IBM are offering green solutions with their Z series mainframe running Red Hat which is being deployed to their joint customers across the globe interested in both reducing their IT cost and reducing their carbon footprint.
Recently the Linux Foundation did a survey on the value of Linux, estimating the collective R&D of the platform at over $10 billion dollars. Both Red Hat and IBM have been significant contributors to this effort. In fact they regularly appear at the top the list of our “Who Writes Linux” annual report.
It is important to note that IBM and Red Hat share their work on Linux with their competitors and fellow Linux Foundation members. Why do they do it? Because they know that they can compete at ever higher levels of innovation. They offer world class service, leading management tools, enterprise class middleware solutions, cutting edge cloud computing offerings and second to none price performance on a variety of platforms from small servers to big iron. The reason Red hat and IBM are so successful is because while they share their source code they are constantly raising the bar higher in terms of innovation and value; which is exactly what their customers want.