The VAR Guy

Red Hat is gearing up to host a major North America Partner Conference (Oct. 25-27, Miami). The event signals a shift for Red Hat, which previously lumped partners and customers together at the annual Red Hat Summit. Here’s the update along with some insights from The VAR Guy.

Yes, the annual Red Hat Summit and Jboss World conference continues to grow, attracting hundreds of partners and customers alike. But Red Hat is finally prepared to put a dedicated spotlight on its North American partners. The October partner conference is expected to include distributors, system integrators, VARs, solutions providers, ISVs and OEMs. Attendance will be invitation only. More information is expected to reach partners this month.

Red Hat generates between 50 and 60 percent of its revenues from channel partners. In recent years, the company has pushed beyond Linux to promote Jboss middleware, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) and a range of cloud initiatives.

So far, so good. Red Hat is marching toward $1 billion in annual revenues this year. But intense competition looms around every corner. Earlier this week, a Wall Street firm downgraded Red Hat shares. Among the reasons: Intense competition from Microsoft, which still knows how to build big businesses.

Moreover, Red Hat must find a way to be heard in the very noisy cloud market. The company is warning customers not to get locked into Windows Azure and other Microsoft cloud standards. But Red Hat itself must convince partners and customers to leverage Red Hat while building public and private clouds.

It’s safe to expect an update on that strategy during Red Hat’s North America Partner Conference in October.

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