Red Hat becomes bona fide virtualization vendor

It's no surprise that Red Hat is taking pot shots at VMware (and Microsoft) these days.

The Raleigh, NC company has always slammed Microsoft but is not just a Linux vendor anymore. By virtue of its acquisition of Qumranet and its release of Enterprise Linux 5.4 this week,  Red Hat is a bona fide virtualization company.  It is the largest backer of the burgeoning KVM hypervisor and the KVM open source project.

RHEL 5.4, which was announced this week, tightly integrates the KVM hypervisor. And Red Hat also made available a standalone KVM hypervisor for those who wish to use another Linux.

Red Hat is now a direct competitor to VMware hypervisor and to Microsoft's Hyper-V.  With Citrix's Xen in ther open  source fray, it will make it a more exciting market.

Red Hat executives affirmed that the company had made significant modifications and additions to the KVM code developed by the former Qumranet and is also developing a server edition of the desktop virtualization management offering originally conceived and developed by Qumranet.

That server application -- and enhanced desktop application -- will give Red Hat a substantial virtualization platform when they ship later this year. Rivals ought to be worried about Red Hat's entry into the market.