The VAR Guy

From August 27 through September 4, The VAR Guy will pay particularly close attention to Novell and Red Hat. That nine-day period will provide a healthy reality check for the Linux market — and it may also reveal how open source initiatives are shaping up across the IT channel. Here’s why.

Red Hat within the next few weeks — and possibly before Red Hat Summit (Sept. 1-4, Chicago) — plans to make major enhancements to the company’s channel partner program. Heading up to the announcement, Red Hat continues to work more closely with the Open Source Channel Alliance. Here’s the scoop from The VAR Guy.

The VAR Guy enjoys Barron’s and The Motley Fool — two fantastic financial websites. But when it comes to rumors about Red Hat’s future, The VAR Guy has to side with irreverent Fools rather than the traditional Barron’s. Here’s why.

Red Hat is hitting the road and shaking hands with channel partners. In fact, the Linux and open source middleware provider is launching a training road show for Red Hat Advanced Business Partners. But that’s not all. The VAR Guy thinks Red Hat’s annual channel revenues will potentially top $600 million within five years, up from about $326 million today. Here’s the math.

Ever wonder why Red Hat spends so much time focused on the JBoss middleware market and so little time trying to make Linux a desktop standard? The answer involves some simple but startling open source math. Check out this little piece of Red Hat financial info, uncovered by The VAR Guy.