Raleigh NC - November 7, 2007 - Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s
leading provider of open source solutions, today announced its plans to
enable independent software vendors (ISVs) to deliver appliance-based
solutions to their customers, broadening their market reach while
minimizing their development and support costs. The Red Hat Appliance
Operating System will allow applications that are certified on Red Hat
Enterprise Linux to be deployed as software appliances on the broadest
range of servers in the industry, including those running Red Hat
Enterprise Linux, VMware ESX and Microsoft Windows Viridian. Red Hat’s
Linux Automation strategy, also announced today, delivers a
standardized development, deployment and management infrastructure for
the entire Red Hat Enterprise Linux ecosystem.

"Red Hat allows ISVs to bring better solutions to market faster,
while reaching a broader range of customers, without the expense of
porting and maintaining software on multiple operating systems," said
Brian Stevens, Red Hat CTO and vice president, Engineering. "Red Hat
Enterprise Linux-based appliances, enjoying the full suite of Linux
Automation capabilities, will enable ISVs to deliver software in a form
that is significantly easier for their customers to acquire, configure,
deploy and manage."

"New software form factors such as software appliances have to
overcome user skepticism, including concerns over what software
elements are integrated inside the appliance itself," said Brett
Waldman, Research Analyst, System Software at IDC. "Red Hat’s solution
will reduce the barrier to adoption of software appliances by
alleviating some of the packaging concerns, allowing ISVs to create
appliances using the same processes and certifications as their other
applications based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux."

The Red Hat Appliance Operating System (AOS) is built from the
industry’s leading open source operating system, Red Hat Enterprise
Linux, with which it shares full ABI and API compatibility. It includes
the Virtual Appliance Development Kit (vADK) that will allow ISVs to
easily configure the operating system along with their middleware and
applications to produce a complete system image. Thousands of existing
software vendors will be able to leverage this new deployment model
without extra development effort. Red Hat reduces complexity for ISVs,
allowing them to develop, test and certify a solution once. Deployment
is then seamless across standalone servers, virtual machines,
appliances and web-scale "cloud" computing environments. ISVs
significantly reduce their development costs by standardizing on a
single operating system – "certify once, deploy anywhere."

Today, Red Hat also announced that a wide range of software
solutions on Red Hat Exchange are available for trial and purchase as
pre-configured software appliances. Customers can quickly and easily
purchase and deploy an integrated solution consisting of third-party
software, JBoss middleware and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with no
installation or configuration complexity. The total time necessary to
purchase, install and use these solutions is just minutes.

The Red Hat Appliance Operating System is planned for availability in
the first half of 2008. Independent Software Vendors interested in the
participating in Red Hat’s Appliance program are requested to contact appliance-info@redhat.com.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world’s leading open source solutions provider, is
headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 50 satellite offices spanning
the globe. CIOs have ranked Red Hat first for value in Enterprise
Software for three consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor
Value study. Red Hat provides high-quality, low-cost technology with
its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with
applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA)
solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite. Red Hat
also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers
worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.