Red Hat has hired a Novell veteran to lead the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) push into the IT channel, The VAR Guy has learned. Kevin Pereau, Novell’s former director of ISV ecosystems, joined Red Hat about six weeks ago. Here’s the update, plus a closer look at how Red Hat plans to position RHEV against VMware vSphere and and Microsoft Hyper-V.
At Red Hat Partner Summit in Boston, Pereau and Navin R. Thadani (senior director of Red Hat’s virtualization business) sat down with The VAR Guy about an hour ago. Pereau said he joined Red Hat to help drive RHEV product marketing, and he’ll work closely with Red Hat North American Channel Chief Roger Egan and Global Channel Chief Mark Enzweiler.
The RHEV push stretches all the way up the CEO position, where Jim Whitehurst says RHEV is a lower-cost, higher-performing alternative to VMware, though Whitehurst concedes RHEV needs to match VMware’s overall management tools.
Meanwhile, Thadani claims RHEV offers channel partners four key advantages over rival virtualization options:
- Unmatched performance and scalability.
- A proven security infrastructure, based on Red Hat’s experience with Linux security.
- An ecosystem of hardware and software partners.
- Cost savings that deliver more profits to partners. In one scenario, Thadani claimed RHEV delivers (US)$1.70 in partner profits for every $1.00 of RHEV sold, compared to $0.40 in profits for every $1.00 of VMware sold.
Reality Check
Of course, it’s difficult for The VAR Guy to confirm or dismiss those profitability claims.
Even if RHEV offers cost benefits over VMware, some channel partners tell The VAR Guy they’re sticking with VMware because of that platform’s proven management tools and VMware’s proven ability to save hardware dollars while improving server utilization rates.
Still, you can bet Pereau will be working closely with Thadani and the Red Hat channel team to recruit and certify RHEV partners. Red Hat announced a channel specialization for RHEV partners in mid-2009. The VAR Guy will be checking Red Hat’s latest financial results (scheduled to be announced this evening) to see if Red Hat discloses how RHEV is performing so far.
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Tags: Jim Whitehurst | Kevin Pereau | Navin R. Thadani | Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization | Red Hat Summit | RHEV vs Hyper-V | RHEV vs VMware | RHEV vs vSphere
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When Red Hat purchased Qumranet (commercial sponsor of KVM) for $107M a couple of years ago, it meant that Red Hat would eventually abandon support for Xen, which Red Hat has done. KVM is included in most Linux distros. Novell supports KVM because Novell wants to have SLES run as a good guest virtual machine everywhere…ESX/ESXi, Xen, Hyper-V, VirtualBox and KVM.
The problem for Red Hat will be finding virtualization customers interested in using KVM beyond their existing customer base. This is why Mr. Pereau was brought on board. Red Hat’s existing customers probably constitute those most willing to give KVM a trial. However, I think it will be a very tough sell to get anyone who is not a Red Hat customer seriously interested in RHEV until the management tools are close to what VMware offers its customers. And from what I understand today, they aren’t there yet.
Tim: The VAR Guy appreciates the fact that you weigh in with some views that are well-organized. Our resident blogger isn’t that familiar with the Xen vs KVM debate. But ultimately, it sounds like Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 will be the big springboard for more aggressive RHEV push…
-TVG