The VAR Guy

When Red Hat Summit and JBoss World kick off June 22 in Boston, The VAR Guy expects Microsoft, Cisco Systems and IBM to be on hand for conference announcements and presentations. Most of the discussions will involve virtualization. But that’s not all. Red Hat will also update investors as the company marches toward $1 billion in annual revenues. Here are the details.

Frankly, it’s difficult to track everything that’s expected to occur at Red Hat Summit, because the open source company continues to diversify beyond its Linux heritage to promote JBoss middleware and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV). Here’s how The VAR Guy expects the conference to unfold…

1. Money Matters: Red Hat is expected to announce quarterly results the evening on June 22. Plus, Red Hat will meet with financial analysts the morning on June 23.

The VAR Guy doesn’t make buy, sell or hold recommendations, but our resident blogger has held a few Red Hat shares for several years because CIOs flocked to open source during the economic downturn.

How is Red Hat performing during an apparent economic recovery? Fiscal year 2010 revenues were $748 million, up 15 percent from fiscal year 2009. We’ll get Q1 2011 results on June 22. (Yes, Red Hat has already started its fiscal year 2011.)

2. Strange Bedfellows: Red Hat in 2009 warned customers not to get locked into Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud strategy. Even so, Red Hat and Microsoft are partnering on virtualization — because the duo has a common enemy in VMware.

At Red Hat Summit, watch for John Kelbley (Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft) and Ronald Pacheco (Principal Partner Manager, Red Hat) to describe how Microsoft and Red Hat are working together on virtualization.

3. Virtualization Everywhere: Of course, Microsoft is only one of Red Hat’s multiple virtualization partners. Watch for most of the major server makers to endorse Red Hat’s virtualization vision. Red Hat’s focus will include some sort of Virtualization Acceleration effort.

4. Unified Computing System: Cisco Systems continues to pitch unified computing (the convergence of storage, networking and servers). It’s safe to expect Red Hat to join the pitch during Red Hat Summit.

5. Partners Matter: Roughly 60 percent of Red Hat’s revenues now involve channel partners. And for the second year in a row, Red Hat landed atop The VAR Guy’s Open Source 50 report, which tracks the top open source partner programs.

But who are Red Hat’s top channel partners? The answer could present itself during a series of partner-centric meetings on June 21 and 22.

Of course, The VAR Guy will be listening closely for additional Red Hat chatter.

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