Red Hat Increases Government Influence

As part of its strategy to expand its deployment in government,
Red Hat today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy
(DoE) Labs would be deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The move
comes on the same day Red Hat announced that it was opening a new
government business unit.

The DoE deployment is a broad initiative that will see RHEL installed
in DoE National Laboratories and Technology Centers across the United States.

“Over the past decade open source software, especially Linux, has
helped revolutionize high-performance cluster computing, and we expect
it to continue to help us push the price performance envelope,” said Roy
Whitney, CIO of Jefferson Lab and secretary of the DoE’s Lab Directors’ System of
Labs Computing Coordinating Committee, in a statement. “Equally important,
DoE lab systems require a secure, highly reliable and high performance
environment that runs on systems ranging from the desktop to the high-end
clusters.”

The DoE deployment is not the first high-profile Red Hat U.S. government
installation. In fact Red Hat claims the NOAA, GSA, FAA, DHS/FEMA and the
Defense Department among its U.S. government customers.

To further that
adoption and to lobby for even more government penetration, Red Hat today
announced that it was creating a government business unit with industry
veteran Paul Smith at the helm. Smith had previously been with Veritas
where he was the vice president of government operations.

“Governments globally are looking for secure platforms to manage complex
information systems and more effectively deliver services to citizens,”
said Matthew Szulik, chairman and CEO of Red Hat, in a statement.
“Establishing a new business unit with Mr. Smith at the helm will
enable us to serve our government customers well.”

Red Hat is expected to announce its latest RHEL update at LinuxWorld in Boston in
two weeks.