Red Hat officially introduced its latest Asia Pacific (AP) initiative, the Open Source Collaborative Innovation (OCSI), in Singapore last week, designed to advance and build a global open source community for collaboration innovation...

Red Hat officially introduced its latest Asia Pacific (AP) initiative, the Open Source Collaborative Innovation (OCSI), in Singapore last week, designed to advance and build a global open source community for collaboration innovation.

The OSCI encompasses four different programmes which have been tailor-made to focus on the growing needs for open source awareness and collaboration in AP said Red Hat.

The programs include Red Hat’s participation in the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore’s (IDA’s) Infocomm Local Industry Upgrading Programme (iLIUP), expansion of the Red Hat Academy in ASEAN, initiation of the Home of Open Source in Singapore and the setting up of the Red Hat Open Source Centres.

These programs have been materialized to focus on making more open source solutions available to the market through partnerships with local software developers, developing open source skills and providing resources and support to encourage an active open source community.

Speaking at its official launch last Tuesday, Red Hat’s President and CEO, Jim Whitehurst said that although it is not as yet the dominant technology in corporate IT infrastructure, open source is emerging as a serious challenger to the proprietary model of software development and will notably be the defining technology of the 21st century.

“The appeal of open source increases as enterprises face the parallel realities of shrinking IT budgets and growing pressure to do more with less resources,” added Whitehurst.

“As the world grapples with economic turbulence, open source is at the tipping point.”

Red Hat said it has noticed tremendous interest, usage and development of open source from Asia and attributes this to the technology’s ability to save cost, ease manageability, accelerate innovation, produce better solutions and most importantly, free one from vendor lock-in.

Whitehurst said open source adoption is only set to increase as the use of the Linux operating system grows and governments and enterprises increasingly taking open source seriously.

According to IDC, the Linux server operating environment market in Asia/ Pacific (excluding Japan) is expected to grow at a 5-year compounded annual growth rate of 21.6 percent from 2007 to 2011.

Red Hat expects a massive growth of open source in the next few years not only in the enterprise segment but also amongst the consumers. It also sees open source gaining traction in the mobile space citing Google’s open handset platform Android as just beginning of more things to come in the future.

The programs initiated under the OSCI umbrella set out to address the various needs of open source. Under the iLIUP, Red Hat will work with six local independent software vendor (ISVs) to expand the range of open source applications for enterprises and small and medium sized businesses.

The Red Hat Academy in ASEAN, which is a joint venture between the Asia Pacific College of the Philippines, Singapore Polytechnic and the Institute of Technical Education, will hold courses to teach students valuable Linux and open source skills set.

Whitehurst said Red Hat plans to have 1000 students trained under this institution by 2009 in order to meet the increasing demands for Linux skills as open source adoption ramps up in ASEAN.

The Home of the Open Source and the Open Source Centres make up the remaining two facilities. The former aims to bring together open source evangelists, solutions developers and users and local Linux user groups for collaborative discussion whilst the latter will function as an education facility for the Singapore workforce to enable themselves with open source skills on Red Hat technologies.

SDA Asia understands that plans are already in the pipeline for Red Hat to launch similar programs in other parts of the region.