Red Hat reseller drive after Hypervisor release

KVM inclusion a selling point

By Hamish Barwick, Auckland | Thursday, 14 May 2009
Virtualisation vendor Red Hat in on the hunt for local resellers following the launch of its Embedded Hypervisor, which offers KVM [Kernel Virtual Machine] virtualisation.

Red Hat A/NZ managing director Max McLaren says the incorporation of KVM, rather than a separate virtualisation layer, is a selling point.

"Everything that you build into the Linux operating system is tested with the kernel. You don’t have to go out and re-create a security map.

"One of the challenges with virtualisation has been performance and then being able to run any application you want on top of that virtualisation hypervisor.”

McLaren adds local resellers are assured of keeping business as Red Hat has no direct sales operation here. He says if resellers build a business plan for Red Hat, the company will share marketing funds and leads.

With regard to the Sun Oracle merger, McLaren says Red Hat continues to see consolidation happening in the market.
“Sun has some really good open source technologies that we hope will continue to prosper under Oracle, particularly their open office technology and Java technology. We look forward to working with them on those technologies in the future.”

McLaren adds that the company is on the hunt for more resellers.
“The great value proposition for New Zealand partners is that we don’t operate directly here. They don’t have to worry about direct sales people coming in and swooping on their business.”

If resellers are prepared to build a business plan for Red Hat, McLaren says the company will share marketing funds and leads.