Red Hat unveils plans to increase its focus in India

Close on the heels of raising around $ 600 million, Red Hat–the Linux
provider is all set to increase its focus in the Indian sub-continent on various
fronts.

"We have just raised about $ 600 million and now we are looking forward
to making sure that this money is invested properly to increase our presence and
penetration. Within India, we would be investing our efforts in the education
sector and also working closely with the government and partner with them in
various areas," informed Matthew Szulik, Chairman, CEO and President, Red
Hat.

As part of its increased focus within India, the company would be hiring
close to 200 software profe-ssionals over a period of three years. "At
present, we have a team of about 90 pro-fessionals. We will increase it by
another 200 within 36 months. The recruiting process has already started and we
are looking for people for our support, development and marketing
expansions," he added.

Though the company has not divulged details about its investment plans, it
has, however, outlined areas such as storage and virtualization as the two most
addressed areas in the near future.

"This is my first visit to India and I certainly believe that India has
a lot of potential for us and the Linux market. We would be focusing on areas
such as SAN and how can it be useful in verticals like healthcare and education.
We would also be emphasizing on virtualization and development of open source
based file systems," Szulik explained.

Citing the lack of GPL (General Public License) format for major hardware
manufacturers as a road-block in front of the company and its growing user
commu-nity, Szulik said that the company is looking forward to working closely
with worldwide chip manufac-turers and hardware vendors to increase the number
of GPL based products in the market.

"We know that there are a lot of users who feel difficulty when it comes
to finding right drivers for Linux and we are going to address this issue. The
whole industry needs to understand that now we need to move away from an aging
client server approach to a more open distributed computing environment. World
heavyweights such as Dell and IBM can make a lot of difference if they address
this properly," he added.

Accepting the fact that China together with India symbolizes one of the most
lucrative markets in the worldwide scenario, he said that the company is open to
have a software development facility in China.

CyberMedia News Service

New Delhi