Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE:RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, the latest major release of the company's flagship platform. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 not only lays the foundation for the open hybrid cloud and serves enterprise workloads across converged infrastructures, but it also pushes the operating system beyond today's position as a commodity platform. Built to meet modern datacenter demands along with next-generation IT requirements, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 powers the spectrum of enterprise IT, from application containers to cloud services.

As the worlds of physical, virtual and cloud systems converge, Red Hat is delivering a true open hybrid cloud platform that gives both ISVs and applications a consistent runtime platform across bare metal systems, virtual machines, and public and private clouds. This will be essential as applications move from on-premises to the cloud. Paul Cormier President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat

Since its introduction more than a decade ago, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has become the world's leading enterprise Linux platform, and it has set industry standards for performance, capacity, and security. Today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a leading force in the enterprise datacenter and in the cloud. More than 90 percent of 2013 Fortune 500 companies, along with organizations in nearly every industry and around the globe, rely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Bare metal servers, virtual machines, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) are converging to form a robust, powerful datacenter environment to meet constantly changing business needs. Answering the heterogeneous realities of modern enterprise IT, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 offers a cohesive, unified foundation that enables customers to balance modern demands while reaping the benefits of computing innovation, like Linux Containers and big data, across physical systems, virtual machines and the cloud - the open hybrid cloud.

Addressing Next-Generation IT Requirements

Enterprise IT does not exist in a static vacuum; technology is dynamic, with new innovations emerging almost daily, promising improved operational efficiencies as well as providing the ability to respond to radically-evolving business requirements. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 offers customers the agility and the flexibility to meet these new needs head-on without increasing complexity, from rapidly delivering new applications via secure, lightweight containers to scaling infrastructure to meet big data requirements with new and enhanced file systems. Key Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 features to address next-generation IT needs include:

Enhanced application development, delivery, portability and isolation through Linux Containers, including Docker, across physical, virtual, and cloud deployments as well as development, test and production environments.

across physical, virtual, and cloud deployments as well as development, test and production environments. Significant file system improvements, including XFS as the default file system , scaling to 500 TB.

, scaling to 500 TB. Cross-realm trust to easily enable secure access for Microsoft Active Directory users across Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux domains, providing the flexibility for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to co-exist within heterogeneous datacenters.

to easily enable secure access for Microsoft Active Directory users across Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Enterprise Linux domains, providing the flexibility for Red Hat Enterprise Linux to co-exist within heterogeneous datacenters. Powerful and secure application runtimes and development, delivery and troubleshooting tools, integrated into the platform and container-ready.

Managing the Modern Datacenter

Beyond providing the capabilities to meet emerging IT innovation, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 also addresses today's technology needs. With growing requests for complex systems, on-demand services and robust security, IT teams need more control, more clarity and more scalability without having to deploy dozens of specialized tools. Independent of deployment scale, scope or complexity, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 serves as not only a catalyst for enterprise innovation, but also delivers the military-grade security and the mission-critical reliability, as well as the performance, the features and the ease-of-use to efficiently "keep the lights on," including:

Innovative infrastructure components like systemd , a leading standard for modernizing the management of processes, services, security and other resources.

, a leading standard for modernizing the management of processes, services, security and other resources. Built-in performance profiles, tuning and instrumentation for optimized performance and easy scalability.

for optimized performance and easy scalability. Unified management tooling and an industry-standard management framework with OpenLMI for streamlined administration and system configuration.

for streamlined administration and system configuration. Enhanced application isolation and security applied via containerization to protect against both unintentional interference and malicious attacks.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Ecosystem

As with all of Red Hat's enterprise open source solutions, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is backed by Red Hat's extensive global ecosystem of services and support. Read more about the global technology leaders that are rallying behind Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.

Additionally, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 will be supported by Red Hat's robust hands-on training and certification program, featuring classroom, virtual and on-site team courses. More details about the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 training and certification portfolio will be available soon.

Virtual Event and Press Webcast

Red Hat will host a virtual event - Redefining the Enterprise OS - to share more about Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 today, beginning at 11 a.m. EDT. Following keynote remarks from Red Hat's Paul Cormier, president, Products and Technologies; Tim Yeaton, senior vice president, Infrastructure Group; and Jim Totton, vice president and general manager, Platform Business Unit, press and analysts are invited to participate in a question and answer session.

To join the virtual event or view the replay after the event, visit http://bit.ly/RHELpress.

Supporting Quotes

Paul Cormier, president, Products and Technologies, Red Hat

"Over the course of the last 12 years, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has helped disrupt and define modern enterprise computing. From the Fortune 500 and global stock exchanges to government agencies, web start-ups, and many of the world's biggest clouds, Red Hat Enterprise Linux has set the standard for the enterprise operating system. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, we're raising the bar again and bringing the next-generation of IT to customers. As the worlds of physical, virtual and cloud systems converge, Red Hat is delivering a true open hybrid cloud platform that gives both ISVs and applications a consistent runtime platform across bare metal systems, virtual machines, and public and private clouds. This will be essential as applications move from on-premises to the cloud."

Jay Lyman, senior analyst, 451 Research

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 helps to introduce newer technology, such as Linux Containers and related Docker software, to large enterprise environments along with the stability and certifications that enterprises demand. This is critical given the growing number of organizations mixing new technology and methodology - such as cloud, agile and DevOps approaches - with their existing infrastructure, processes and governance."

Richard Fichera blog post, Red Hat Releases Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 - Linux Continues its March to the Top

Forrester Research, Inc., June 2014

"Linux has continued to mature nicely as both a foundation for large scale-out clouds as well as a strong contender for the kind of enterprise workloads that previously were only comfortable on either RISC/UNIX systems or large Microsoft Server systems."

Mark Driver, vice president and research director, Gartner1

"By 2015, Gartner believes that at least 95% of all mainstream IT organizations will leverage some element of OSS - directly or indirectly - within their mission-critical IT solutions."

Al Gillen, program vice president, Servers and System Software, IDC

"Red Hat has systematically grown the capabilities and value proposition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with each new release. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is no exception, and layers features and support for Linux Containers on top of an operating system that has seen major virtualization and cloud enhancements in the past two years. The addition of cross-realm trust with Active Directory is a pragmatic move, especially given the widespread use of Active Directory as a primary identity store."

Laurent Lachal, senior analyst, Ovum

"Owing to its position as the largest and most important open source technology provider and promoter, Red Hat punches above its weight against much larger incumbents. Enterprises have now accepted Red Hat Enterprise Linux as a mainstream enterprise OS. They want to understand how it will evolve not just on its own but also in a broader virtualized and cloudified data center context as well as in a public cloud context."

Munjeet Singh, principal, Digital Platform Infrastructure, Booz Allen Hamilton

"At Booz Allen Hamilton, we view Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 as a foundational component for modern cloud infrastructure. We are pleased to see Red Hat positioning Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 for the future of cloud consumption such as DevOps and PaaS, particularly with the integration of Docker and Linux container elements in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. Like Red Hat, we look to containerized applications as the evolution of application delivery."

Vinod Kutty, senior director, Enterprise Server Platforms, CME Group

"We want to get into a faster pace of adopting upstream features, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 brings us capabilities that we are very interested in, like containers and Docker. Additionally, we support both Linux and Windows, so we are interested in cross-platform support and interoperability within Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. We've been with Red Hat for the last 10 years because they have provided value, and we expect that relationship to continue with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7."

Masahiko Iwata, general manager, NTT Open Source Software Center, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides the robust platform upon which a substantial number of NTT Group's services, ranging from our core communication business to the cloud, and supporting IT infrastructure have been built. We believe that open source is an engine of innovation that brings the best minds and companies together to create exciting new software and services. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 is the crystallization of four years' worth of such collaborative efforts across all the stack into an enterprise-class distribution, which we view as a rock-solid foundation for new services in the cloud era."

Chris Wojdak, senior architect, Symcor

"Because of our position with the financial processing industry, user and identity control across a wide range of systems is very important to us and our customers. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 will provide us with a cost effective and easy to use Corporate Wide Identity management solution, substantially reducing the time it takes to secure and administer our Hadoop cluster, SSO platforms, databases and Red Hat Enterprise Linux logins, among other systems."

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