Red Hat, Dell reveal OEM partnership

The announcement on Tuesday of a new partnership between Dell and Red Hat could mark a further expansion of open-source software use in the enterprise, Network World reports.

OEM customers looking to Dell for custom products will now have additional open-source options. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss join SUSE as standard choices for Dell OEM.

During a Web cast, Red Hat VP Scott Crenshaw said OpenShift will compete head-on with another relatively new open-source PaaS, VMware's Cloud Foundry, but will offer three key differentiators that will distinguish it from its rival - a world-class open source operating system that powers many of the world's biggest clouds, a rich appdev and middleware platform and built-in, two-tiered multi-tenancy support in its Linux distribution that will allow enterprises to run multiple application instances on a single VM securely, ZDNet notes.

“We're glad that VMware has decided on something in the open source space and is providing a relatively open platform for developers,” Crenshaw said, when asked about the competition. “We applaud them for joining us and leading the charge for an open PaaS, but OpenShift and Cloud Foundry are competitive and developers have to choose,” he said.

Red Hat recently became the first open-source business to reach a $1 billion valuation, Afterdawn writes.

The first verticals in the new partnership will be telecommunications and security equipment manufacturers, where Red Hat is already very prominent.