Skull With Top Hat Drawing

Red Hat is an American multinational software company that provides open source products that can be easily ordered and implemented. Red Hat created the original open source business model. The company contributes to the Fedora Linux open source project, the basis for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but charges subscription, support and services fees to those customers who rely on Red Hat for maintenance, support, and installation. Open-source code is provided so that programmers can make adaptations and improvements to the software.

Red Hat got its name from founder Marc Ewing, who wore a red Cornell lacrosse hat given to him by his grandfather while attending Carnegie Mellon University. In October 2018, IBM announced that it would acquire Red Hat for $34 billion one of its largest acquisitions. The acquisition closed on July 9, 2019. Red Hat contributes to more than 450 open source projects involving many aspects of the software stack.

Red Hat products

Red Hat offers many products for multiple platforms. While we outline some products, it is not comprehensive.

Linux platforms

Enterprise Linux: A Linux-based operating system for scaling existing applications and creating new technologies.
OpenStack Platform: A secure platform for building public and private clouds.
Satellite: An IT infrastructure management tool primarily used to monitor and manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments.

Read more about Red Hat and the top open source iterations of Linux with: Best Linux Server Distributions of 2020 at TechRepublic.

Virtualization platforms

Virtualization : Enterprise virtualization management for servers and desktops within the same infrastructure.
Hyperconverged Infrastructure : Consolidates compute, storage, and networking resources into a unified system.

Also read why Red Hat made Datamation's Top Data Virtualization Tools of 2021.

Cloud Computing platforms

OpenShift: An open source container application platform.
Certificate system: An enterprise software system that provides a secure framework to establish and maintain trusted identities and keep communications private.
Directory Server: An operating system-independent, network-based registry.
Quay: A private container registry for storing, building, and deploying container images.

Read more on Red Hat's cloud projects with: IBM Boosts Its Hybrid Cloud with New Power System, Red Hat (eWeek).

Storage

Gluster Storage: Open, software-defined file storage.
Ceph Storage: A block and object storage platform for enterprises deploying public or private clouds.
OpenShift Container Storage: Software-defined storage built specifically for container environments.

Management

Smart Management: Infrastructure management software for controlling any environment supported by Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Ansible Automation Platform: An agentless automation platform.
Insights: A predictive analytics tool for analysis of Red Hat Infrastructure.

Red Hat Competitors

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Apache Software Foundation
Citrix
Cloud Foundry
Docker
GitLab
Google
IBM
Microsoft
Oracle
VMware

Also read: Red Hat Virtualization vs. Proxmox VE (Enterprise Networking Planet)

Recognition and Reviews

Red Hat's received market Visionary status on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed File Systems and Object Storage (2016-2020). For the Forrester Wave, Red Hat holds a number of accolades, including:

Strong Performer – In-Memory Databases (2017)
Contender – API Management Solutions (2018)
Leader – Infrastructure Automation Platforms (2020)
Contender – Hyperconverged Infrastructure (2020)
Leader – Multicloud Container Development Platforms (2020)

Read why Red Hat makes eSecurity Planet's top Patch Management Software & Tools.

On Gartner Peer Insights, Red Hat holds scores in a multitude of solution categories. The company's top three reviewed solutions, scores, and highlighted features currently are:

Garner Peer Insights	Ratings	Reviews	Praised Features
Application Release Orchestration	4.6	166	Integration and deployment, ease using standard APIs, and quality of peer user community
Server Virtualization	4.4	180	Capabilities including security, storage, networking, recoverability, and interoperability.
Application Platforms	4.4	124	Support for app deployment, runtime environments, and app life-cycle management.

Recent Coverage

Holes in Linux Kernel Could Pose Problems for Red Hat (eSecurityPlanet)
Red Hat to Build Analytics Platform to Help Combat Climate Change (IT Business Edge)
RH survey points to enterprises' biggest pain with open source support (TechRepublic)
Best DevOps Monitoring Tools & Applications for 2021 (IT Business Edge)
Best Network Automation Tools for 2021 (Enterprise Networking Planet)

Updated by Sam Ingalls on September 16, 2021.

Abby Braden

Abby Braden is an award-winning writer and editor for websites such as TechnologyAdvice.com, Webopedia.com, and Project-Management.com, where she covers technology trends and enterprise and SMB project management platforms. When she's not writing about technology, she enjoys giving too many treats to her dog and coaching part-time at her local gym.