April 14, 2009, 9:38 AM — Red Hat is helping nine of its open source ISV (independent software vendor) partners get broader distribution for their products in North America through a partnership with one of its major distributors, SYNNEX.
Through an arrangement called the Open Source Channel Alliance, Red Hat said Tuesday that it has helped form relationships between SYNNEX and the following companies that sell open-source software that runs on both Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and JBoss Enterprise Middleware: Alfresco, EnterpriseDB, Ingres, Jaspersoft, Likewise, Pentaho, Zmanda, Zenoss and Zimbra.
The alliance gives the small open source vendors an opportunity to reach a broad market they otherwise would not have access to, said Roger Egan, Red Hat's vice president of channel sales for North America.
"We're encouraging SYNNEX to work with these ISVs along with us," he said. Major distributors in North America don't typically sign up smaller ISVs, but SYNNEX is making an exception in this case because of these vendors' relationship with Red Hat, Egan said.
The partnership also will help Red Hat sell more products, as open source software from these ISVs is more likely to run on infrastructure based on RHEL and JBoss than on infrastructure from proprietary vendors, he said.
Red Hat executives have publicly said it's the company's mission to promote not only its open source products, but open source software in general. Egan said that the new alliance is evidence of that.
"Our view of the world is we want to make open source and our business model more prevalent in the channel in North America," Egan said. "If we gain support for distribution [of other vendors who work with us], it will mean more value in the marketplace and we'll derive more benefit."
However, he added that SYNNEX's distribution of the alliance ISV's products is not contingent on sales of RHEL or JBoss. "Nothing locks you in," he said.
Red Hat plans in the future to broaden the number of ISVs in the alliance.
