Red Hat Won't Eclipse Sun with New Release, Say Analysts

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) unveiled its updated enterprise Linux distribution today and used the occasion to take a shot at rival Sun.

"It's the beginning of the end of Solaris in the enterprise," Paul Cormier, executive vice president of engineering at Red Hat, said of Enterprise Linux v4, which the company said is capable of handling any enterprise-level application.

Still in the Game

Analysts told LinuxInsider that the new release is not quite at the level of Sun's enterprise product, however.

"Sun's in a tough fight with Linux, which new advances from Red Hat certainly don't make any easier. But Solaris 10 has impressive capabilities of its own," Gordon Haff, senior analyst, Illuminata, told LinuxInsider.

Stacey Quandt, Open Source Practice Leader for the Robert Frances Group, agreed. "Although many organizations continue to migrate Solaris workloads from UltraSPARC to Linux on x86 and other platforms, the latest version of Red Hat does not eliminate the need for Solaris in the enterprise," she said.

"The performance characteristics of Solaris on AMD (NYSE: AMD) Opteron

Talkback: Be the first to comment on this story.

Next Article in Applications

European Commission Delays Action on Software Patents February 11, 2005 Opponents, including the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), have aggressively lobbied against the directive, claiming it would lead to widespread patenting of software. The FFII is dedicated to the spread of data processing literacy. It supports the development of public information goods based on free competition and open standards.

Related Stories

Open Source: Predicting a Happy New Year December 21, 2004 In 2005, open source will become respectable for big business. It is true that many big businesses already have respect for open-source software, such as IBM, Oracle and Sun. Even Microsoft has developed a healthy respect for open source as a formidable adversary.

Skills Shortage Could Mean Growing Pains for Open Source December 08, 2004 In a survey released by Forrester Research, 57 percent of those using Linux or open-source software said their biggest concern was lack of support; 36 percent said it was a lack of skills or knowledge. Of the respondents who weren't using Linux or open-source software, 55 percent tagged lack of skills or knowledge as their biggest concern; 53 percent said it was lack of support.

Red Hat: Time for the Tar and Feathers? October 07, 2004 Years ago everyone I knew who tried Linux also tried Red Hat, but then Red Hat started to turn itself into the new Microsoft and people who were able to make their own decisions promptly switched to SuSE. Today, most users have moved on to Debian -- my own favorite after Caldera became too hot to mention.

Can Open Source Take Over the World? September 10, 2004 Gartner analyst Andrea Di Maio told LinuxInsider that many European countries are taking a close look at cost issues. Although Linux vendors tout the lower costs of open source, Di Maio noted that the numbers can be more complex than they claim when migration costs are factored in.

SCO: Friend to Open Source? August 11, 2004 Although SCO's litigation has not alienated every open-source advocate, the company will still have difficulty in generating positive feelings in the larger community. "They've lost quite a bit of goodwill," George Weiss of Gartner research said. "Whether they can come back from that remains to be seen."

More by Susan B. Shor

Salesnet President Jonathan Tang Ready to Take On Salesforce.com February 07, 2006 "We think it's Salesnet's time now. We've been around since the beginning, we've been lying low, but you're going to start to see more of us. We've done it through organic growth and happy customers. We continue to focus on customers."

Comcast Follows Time Warner in Offering 'Family' Programming Tier December 23, 2005 "The demand for this type of tier is coming from the FCC and Christian conservatives. It has nothing to do with legitimate consumer demand," Todd Chanko, senior analyst at Jupiter Media, told the E-Commerce Times.

High-Risk Flaw Found in Symantec's Software December 22, 2005 "Part of the significance of this vulnerability announcement is that your machine can be exploited without you needing to do anything at all. You don't even have to open an e-mail or attachment, and this happens with the default configuration of the product," said Forrester Research senior analyst Michael Gavin.

[Search More...]