HP to resell, support Red Hat worldwide

Hewlett-Packard announced Wednesday it is strengthening the services it provides to buyers of HP servers and workstations that run on Red Hat's Linux operating systems.

The move is warranted because HP systems based on Red Hat's Linux operating systems are increasingly being used for critical business operations, such as running enterprise databases and applications, said Hugh Jenkins, vice president for HP's industry standard servers division.

"We need to step up with the robust services and support capabilities that customers expect to see around our other tier one operating systems," Jenkins said.

Although Red Hat and HP have collaborated for several years, the companies lacked, until now, a global agreement for HP to provide a single point of service and support accountability for its systems running Red Hat's Linux operating systems, said Mike Evans, vice president of channel sales and development at Red Hat, in Raleigh, N.C.

So far, the support HP provided for these Red Hat systems was fragmented, and customers often had to put together the system's pieces themselves, whereas now HP is ready to provide comprehensive and sophisticated integration services, the executives said.

The Red Hat operating systems covered by this agreement include Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS, used in high-end servers for demanding tasks such as database and enterprise applications; Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES, used in smaller, departmental servers, such as mail, Web and print servers; and Red Hat Enterprise WS, used in workstations.

HP, in Palo Alto, Calif., generated about $2 billion in Linux-based revenue in 2002, the company said in Wednesday's statement.