Red Hat India travels South

Bangalore: Red Hat India, a Linux and open source provider, has announced the opening of its sales and support office in Bangalore. According to the company there is a great demand for open source software in southern India and with the region being the hub of software developers, the company''s office in Bangalore would be able to provide its customers in the area with their entire range of products and services on a local basis. Its presence in Bangalore would also enable the company to partner its OEMs and ISVs more effectively.

Red Hat has recently announced a long-term technology strategy, namely the Open Source Architecture for Enterprise. Open Source Architecture aims to extend the benefits of the open source model further up the software solution stack to the middleware, application, and management layers, enabling open source benefits to be realized across the computing infrastructure.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the platform for Open Source Architecture. Red Hat applications and partnerships make up the solution stack on this platform while Red Hat Network is the complete systems management platform for Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is available as part of an annual subscription that includes Red Hat Network, support services and is backed by the Red Hat Open Source Assurance program.

Red Hat has played a significant role in increasing the popularity of open source technology in India and at present is the leading player in the market with over 95 per cent of the Linux market share. According to the company there has been an exponential rise in the demand for Red Hat products and services in India, since they first entered in December 2000. Today the company has set up six offices in India at Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkatta and Bhopal.

Red Hat''s OEM partners include IBM, HCL Infosystems and Acer. Red Hat India has a distribution network of channel partners spanning nineteen cities across India. Their key distributors are GT Enterprises, Sonata Software and Integra Microsystems. Red Hat Learning Services are available with over 40 training partners in 27 cities across India.