Summary: In praise of Red Hat, whose efforts to bring GNU/Linux to government are largely successful and hence pave the way for more of the same

RED HAT recently made some headlines for its involvement in a major government effort in the US [1,2]. This symbolised an exciting breakthrough of sorts, despite the fact that Red Hat had been deeply involved in government projects for a number of years now (notably in the defence sector). Like many businesses that jump on the open 'cloud' (e.g. OpenStack) bandwagon [3], Red Hat is increasingly positioning itself as a 'cloud' leader [4], challenging the likes of Canonical [5] in this age of 'cloud' and OpenStack hype [6,7]. Despite or because of the growing popularity of RHEL clones (primarily CentOS [17]), Red Hat is doing well and its CEO continues to provide decent leadership [8]. Based on press releases and announcements from early October [9-13] and even a few from September [14,15], Red Hat now emphasises virtualisation and hosting (or 'cloud', to use marketing terms). Red Hat's shares are expected to rise [16] and it seems safe to say that the better Red Hat does, the better off GNU/Linux as a whole will be. Unlike some other companies, Red Hat shares a lot and is hardly parasitic. ⬆

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Red Hat picked to fix HealthCare.gov

   Red Hat has been pegged to rescue HealthCare.gov.

2. Official: Red Hat's healthcare.gov fix is working





3. Introduction to OpenStack





4. Red Hat wants to be OpenStack's big dog

   You know Red Hat best as the leading business Linux company. You may not know that Red Hat also wants to become the top OpenStack cloud business.





5. Ubuntu launches OpenStack Interoperability Lab





6. OpenStack Defines Itself in Hong Kong

   Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, talks about where the open-source cloud is headed.

7. OpenStack Gains Critical Mass; Are Cloud Channel Partners Ready?

   OpenStack, the open source cloud program, has achieved multiple milestones this week. Cisco Systems (CSCO), Canonical, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Red Hat (RHT), VMware (VMW), Mirantis and others have announced major moves at this week's OpenStack Summit in Hong Kong. From cloud services providers (CSPs) to VARs, it's time for the IT channel to take a much closer look at this technology and its business implications. Here's why.





8. Red Hat CEO Whitehurst talks about 'Team Jim'

   That’s according to the man himself, blogging about how finding a mentor might not be as helpful as building a team, in his case, a “Team Jim.”





9. Red Hat Announces OpenStack-powered Product Offerings to Deliver on Open Hybrid Cloud Vision

10. Red Hat Inc : Red Hat and Shadow-Soft Collaborate on Open Source Middleware Migration for RegEd

11. Red Hat Inc : Red Hat Summit 2014 Call for Proposals Now Open

12. Red Hat Inc : Red Hat Launches the Next Release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

13. Red Hat Inc : Red Hat Releases Red Hat Satellite 5.6





14. Red Hat Inc : Red Hat CIO Lee Congdon to Speak at XChange Best of Breed Conference

15. Red Hat Inc : Red Hat Doubles Down on Enterprise PaaS: Reveals Plans for First Full Complement of Enterprise Middleware Services within OpenShift





16. Red Hat is Now Oversold (RHT)

    A stock is considered to be oversold if the RSI reading falls below 30.





17. Installing and Configuring CentOS