Moderator: We will be starting in just a few minutes!

David Egts: I look forward to answering everyone's questions.

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Moderator: Good Afternoon and welcome to Viewpoint. Today, David Egts, Principal Solutions Architect at Red Hat, is here to answer your questions. Let's get started!

David Egts: Welcome everyone! Thank you for taking the time out of your day to visit with me. I really look forward to chatting with you all. Let's get started!

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Reston, Va.: Is open source the best way to reduce risk simply because of price? What about functionality or ease-of-use?

David Egts: Price is one of many reasons.

In terms of functionality, the rate of innovation with open source is significantly faster than the proprietary model. Nobody is smarter than everybody. In the case of virtualization on x86, the proprietary vendors did a fantastic job over the last 10 years getting the technology to market and into customers' hands. However, over the last 3 years, open source virtualization technologies have caught up and surpassed these vendors in terms of performance and scalability. This is due in large part to the open source community's ability to leverage existing upstream open source components as opposed to diverting engineering resources to develop parallel functionality. Even better, when the virtualization folks make improvements to the components they leverage, they give the changes back allowing everyone else to benefit further. Proprietary software can't keep up with this rate of innovation over a sustained period of time.

With respect to ease of use, the penetration of open source on the desktop has been growing at an increasing rate. Low cost netbooks running Linux are thriving in the consumer market. Even on non-Linux desktops, open source applications such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org are mainstream alternatives.

In terms of ease of use on the system administration side, a single Red Hat Network Satellite Server allows administrators to easily perform systems management on thousands of Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. I've spoken with several customers who have told me that their Windows system to system administrator ratio is on average 40:1. On the UNIX side, the ratio is on average 50:1. With Satellite, I know of specific customers who have Red Hat Enterprise Linux system to admin ratios of 150:1 and even one that is 450:1. With this in mind, please don't only consider the cost of the software, but the cost to manage it. Here is a link to one representative study:

http://www.press.redhat.com/2008/02/29/longhaus-researcher-acknowledges-the-benefits-of-rhn-satellite

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Gaithersburg, Md.: What are the most common security issues you see when converting to open source?

David Egts: Ironically, one of the issues I encounter is the misconception that open source software is less secure because the source code is freely available. Studies have been performed by Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, and the Department of Homeland Security which show that defect rates of the more popular open source software has less defects per 1000 lines of code as compared to their closed source counterparts.

Beyond that, many of the issues are similar between open and closed source software. You want to follow best practices to lock down your systems. Install the least amount of software to minimize your attack surface. Keep your systems up to date with the latest security fixes. Run SELinux, which was co-developed by the NSA, Red Hat, IBM, and others.

The NSA SNAC guides are excellent resources for securing your system.

http://www.nsa.gov/ia/guidance/security_configuration_guides/operating_systems.shtml

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Brooklyn, N.Y.: What advantages do you feel your product offers over open-source Linux like Ubuntu?

David Egts: Ubuntu is a fine distribution which has been popular with many people. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a few differentiators however. The key is to pick the distribution that best fits your needs.

Here are a couple differentiators...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has over 3400 certified software applications, over 2200 ISV partners, and is certified to run on over 750 certified hardware platforms.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has gone through security certifications to operate in certain secure environments. Here is a link to all of our security certifications:

http://www.redhat.com/solutions/government/certifications

Both server and desktop variants of Red Hat Enterprise Linux are supported for 7 years after initial release. Customers really enjoy this stability because it allows them to deploy one version for years without needing to upgrade during the middle of a project's deployment lifespan.

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Dallas, Tex.: I own a small web development company comprised of me and two others. We currently host our clients sites on our own server. We run a free distribution of Apache with PHP and MySQL. On my personal computer I run a multi-boot system with two versions of Windows and a Linux distribution called Sabayon. I very much enjoy the stability of Linux. However I often have trouble running the developmental tools that we need for our business and end up using Windows. How could switching to RedHat Linux improve the stability and usability of our hardware and software?

David Egts: Offhand, I'd suggest three things.

First, training. The most successful customers I work with maximize the use of Red Hat's Global Learning Services. We provide a lot of capability in the software we provide. The key is knowing what's there and learning how to make the most of it. Training plays a big role here.

https://www.redhat.com/training

Second, virtualization. Instead of dual booting, you could run Linux on your primary system and virtual machines running Linux and Windows as guests. That way when you are regression testing your applications, you can test them on all of the platforms you support simultaneously without needing to reboot, or even buy new hardware for that matter.

http://www.redhat.com/rhel/virtualization

Third, reach out to your Red Hat account team and resellers like DLT. We have a Red Hat office in Dallas where several of my solutions architects colleagues reside. They would be happy to sit down with you, review your specific challenges, and see if what we have to offer specifically meets your needs. Please check out the links on the right for the contact information for DLT and Red Hat.

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Vienna, Va.: I am considering a migration, but would probably need to have an assessment done in my environment to evaluate my specific needs, measure cost, risk, etc. How do I do this?

David Egts: We can absolutely do that. Check out the links on the right side of this page for pointers to migration assessments that we can perform. The assessments can include migrating from UNIX or other platforms to Linux, from physical servers to virtual, from proprietary middleware to open source middleware.

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Springfield, Va.: I'm a software developer and currently my company is strictly a Microsoft shop. If we changed to open source solutions, what is the learning curve to pick up these technologies if I'm already familiar with Microsoft?

David Egts: The good news is that migrating to open source is not an "all or nothing" situation. What I'd recommend is a phased approach as opposed to swapping out your entire stack. Get some early wins. Save money. Invest the savings into further migrations. Repeat.

For instance JBoss middleware runs on Windows servers. Start there to carve out the cost of proprietary middleware. Then invest those savings into moving the Windows part over to Linux.

We have migration services to help as I mentioned previously.

We also have developer courses too:

https://www.redhat.com/training

One course specifically geared for Windows administrators in RH033 Red Hat Linux Essentials:

https://www.redhat.com/courses/rh033_red_hat_linux_essentials

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Bonifay, Fla.: Does Red Hat Linux support MS Office's ACCESS database program? If not, what full blown RELATIONAL DATABASE SCHEME is available?

David Egts: Yes and no. We don't natively support Access but we do have other software which can help with data portability and federation. Two such examples are Hibernate and MetaMatrix.

http://www.jboss.com/products/hibernate/
http://www.jboss.com/products/platforms/dataservices/

Both of these products help minimize vendor lock-in and platform independence.

With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we do provide relational databases MySQL and PostgreSQL as well as OpenOffice.org Base for no additional cost.

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Washington, D.C.: The President's newly appointed chief information officer said that he plans to use technology to reduce operating costs, make agencies more accountable and engage the public by increasing access to government information. What challenges do you see ahead for the new federal CIO?

David Egts: The challenges associated with the reduction of operating costs and the increase of accountability are challenges faced by many CIOs in both the public and private sectors. I could definitely go on at length on both of these topics, but instead let me take this time to discuss the challenges associated with government transparency which I find very compelling.

One way to look at government transparency is to ensure that the workings of government are visible to the public in the near term. That is absolutely critical, but let's take a longer term view for a moment.

Few will disagree with the statement that we are definitely living in historic times. As laws are enacted, policy is made, and positions are debated, not only do we need to make the text, video, audio, and metadata available to American citizens today, we need to ensure that it is available to American citizens generations from now. To achieve this, open standards are required to ensure long term survivability and portability.

Let's rewind the clock 233 years. Imagine if the Declaration of Independence was written in "Word 1776." What are the odds that we'd be able to open that original document today? Fast forward the clock 233 years from now. What government documents do we wish our future generations to open? Open standards are the best way to make this information available today and in the far distant future.

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Washington, D.C.: What are the benefits of paying for Red Hat rather than getting Fedora for free? Isn't it basically the same thing?

David Egts: Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux share similar code lineages, but they serve different purposes.

Fedora comes out twice a year, typically around May and Halloween. We position Fedora as the proving ground for the most exciting innovations made by the open source community available today. It's a distribution for those who want to be on the cutting edge.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the other hand is focused more on enterprise deployments so the major release cycle is less frequent, typically every two to three years. The focus is on stability, security, performance, consistency, and long term professional support. During that time, we do provide feature updates and bug fixes, and the changes are guaranteed to be compatible with the kernel ABI to help ensure minimal disruptions when keeping your systems updated and secure. We also work with software and hardware vendors to certify on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and we go through rigorous security certifications to allow it to operate in certain secure environments.

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Silver Spring, Md.: There's occasional discussion on mailing lists and forums about whether GNU/Linux should be focused more on the desktop or the server market, and even occasional talk of forking the kernel to better address one need over the other. Do you think it's possible for one kernel to still serve as the basis for all distress, or would GNU/Linux be better served by splitting into a desktop-tuned and server- tuned development model?

David Egts: The great thing about open source is that people have the freedom to run the code on any platform they like. If they don't like how it performs, they can submit patches to go upstream or fork the code and maintain it themselves.

In the case of Linux, it already runs on telephones, consumer routers, commercial routers, netbooks, laptops, workstations, all the way up to mainframes and supercomputers with thousands of processors and terabytes of RAM (yes RAM).

I would be reluctant to fragment the development efforts to benefit one platform which may result in not benefiting the other. Instead, the modular nature of Linux distributions and the Linux kernel in particular allows innovation to happen across the continuum. For instance, power management innovations in Linux that happen on the netbook/laptop side to extend battery life directly benefit systems in the server room to more efficiently utilize power and cooling resources.

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McLean, Va.: When would you advise against an open source solution?

David Egts: When considering which software to use, I don't recommend looking at open source as one class of software and closed source as another. Instead, I recommend looking at the problem you are trying to solve and choose the best software to solve it. If it happens to be open source, great. If it is closed source, that's fine too. The key is choosing the right tool for job.

With that said, whether or not the software is open source should be one of many factors that go into your selection process. And, the fact that the software under consideration is or isn't open source may cause other requirements to be weighed differently.

As one quick example, in this economic climate you should consider the viability of the companies with whom you'd like to partner. If the company decides to change product direction or unexpectedly goes out of business, do you have a quick migration path to something else? Embracing open source and open standards can significantly reduce this risk as well as give you the agility to quickly change hardware and software vendors with less disruption.

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Houston, Tex.: What do you think about the talk of an open-source mandate?

David Egts: I'm obviously all for the proliferation of open source software.

However, similar to the last question from McLean, I'd be reluctant to have a hard and fast rule that says that all software must be open source just as much as I would prefer to not have a rule that says no software must be open source.

Going back to my last question, the key is to pick the right tool for the job. I highly recommend that open source software should be a consideration and the weighting factors of open source will probably influence the other weighting factors such as cost, flexibility, vendor choice, etc.

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Cary, N.C.: What is the difference between open source and open APIs?

David Egts: With open source, you have access to use the libraries and you can also see what's going on under the hood.

With open APIs, many give you access to the libraries, but you don't necessarily get to see what's happening behind the scenes because the underlying code is proprietary. You can't audit the security since you can't see the code. You can't modify the code to fix bugs or innovate on top of it. You are at the mercy of the vendor for all innovation, security, and robustness.

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Poway, Calif.: Do you feel Open API's are a good compromise for companies that don't want to completely Open Source their code?

David Egts: A few months ago I spoke with the owner of a small startup whose products include open source middleware libraries built on top of Java. I picked his brain as to why he chose the open source route for his company. I asked him if he was concerned about intellectual property protection, raising competitive barriers, etc. I also asked him if his motives for open source were more altruistic, or if it was more for his own business reasons. His answers were fascinating.

He said that when he used to deliver closed source code, he needed to enter into all kinds of legal agreements with each company to put his code into escrow. This was a huge legal cost for him that diverted funding from his engineering efforts that would benefit his company as well as his customers. By going with open source, this problem was greatly minimized because everyone could freely see the code and the need for code escrow and associated legal fees were eliminated. As such, he was able to invest the money saved on legal fees into software innovation.

Further, open source allowed him to openly declare prior art which would help in terms of patent and intellectual property litigation protection.

He said that by opening his code up and serving as the lead committer and maintainer, he wasn't concerned about someone taking his code and selling it as their own. By being the lead for the project, his company was the official source for all changes which raised competitive barriers and provided corporate brand differentiation and recognition.

Also, by opening his code to be freely available, he could extend his addressable market by getting the code into the hands of many more customers without the high touch of a large sales force. Potential customers were able to try out the code, and could then open a dialog up with him when they were ready to purchase production and developer support. This resulted in significantly higher sales operational efficiency because the leads that were coming to him were already qualified.

With respect to my question about doing open source for altruistic reasons, he said that it was primarily a business decision and that the altruistic benefits were a nice side effect. In addition to the benefits above, he said that by having the code open, he would receive peer review of his code and it encouraged him to write better code since everyone can see it and publicly assess the quality in an open manner.

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Tampa Bay, Fla.: What is your opinion on Open Source vs. SaaS argument?

David Egts: Interesting question.

A great thing about open source is that you have access to the code and the data.

SaaS (Software as a Service) is very compelling because you don't need to have to pay to manage the servers and software. It's more of a utility model.

One of the challenges I see with SaaS is that it's often easy to get the data into the service but it may be challenging or impossible to get it out later if want to switch SaaS vendors or take the service back in house. With this in mind, I highly recommend making sure you have a clear exit strategy before subscribing to a SaaS service - make sure you can easily get out what you put in if things don't work out as expected.

If the SaaS provider provides their data inputs and outputs using open standards, that could make SaaS very compelling. The easier it is for you to switch vendors, the more power is in your hands and the harder the SaaS vendor has to work to earn your business and deliver value.

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Herndon, Va.: Can you give examples of specific agencies that have successfully migrated to open source?

David Egts: We have several. I'll point you to a repository of success stories, but first let me tell you about a few successes I know directly.

One of my customers is Hill Air Force Base. They migrated from a proprietary UNIX solution to Red Hat Enterprise Linux which cost a whopping 98% less. Not only did they save a lot of money, performance, reliability, and security were greatly improved. To quote the GCN article link below: "Since the base implemented Project Bonfire, the turnaround time to equip an aircraft with new wheels and brakes shrank from 38 days to 16 days. The new system can run its largest data warehouse load in less than three hours, where before it took more than 12 hours. Response times decreased from 10 seconds to a little more than a second. And instead of being housed in six buildings, the system now resides in two."

http://gcn.com/articles/2007/06/30/order-out-of-chaos.aspx
http://customers.press.redhat.com/2008/01/10/hill-air-force-base-2007-red-hat-innovator-of-the-year/

Another one of my customers is DISA who just recently launched their own internal edition of SourceForge called Forge.mil. Forge.mil provides an environment for the collaborative development and use of open source and DoD community source software. DISA has been doing a lot of innovation based upon open source in house, but now with Forge.mil they now have an ecosystem in place where all federal agencies can participate and leverage the benefits of open collaboration.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10154053-16.html
http://www.disa.mil/forge/

Booz Allen Hamilton has been wildly successful standing up repeatable open source solutions for their federal government customers. I always enjoy interacting with the folks from the Booz Allen Hamilton team because they really "get it" when it comes to developing complete solutions with open source.

http://customers.press.redhat.com/2008/10/08/booz-allen-delivers-a-flexible-and-scalable-soa-solution-to-client-by-leveraging-red-hat-products/
http://customers.press.redhat.com/2008/06/25/booz-allen-hamilton-2008-red-hat-innovation-award-winner/

We have many other examples. Here are a couple more good references of federal, state, local, and international governments who have been successful with open source:

http://www.redhat.com/solutions/government/#tab5 http://customers.press.redhat.com/category/industry/government/

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Kansas City, Mo.: Are there any plans for a Linux based mobile operating system in the future?

David Egts: Google's Android platform is based upon Linux. You can download the open source code base directly from Google.

Android is one of the more obvious mobile platforms that is running Linux. However, you might be surprised to know that a lot of the very mainstream brand name phones are also running Linux.

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Atlanta, Ga.: Can you point me to a whitepaper where I can read more?

David Egts: We have plenty of white paper links on the right column. I also encourage you to reach out to our friends from DLT who can connect you with one of our solutions architects for a deep dive as well.

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Alexandria, VA: Does open source software deliver more reliability relative to its cost than proprietary software?

David Egts: Well there are many ways to look at this, so here's one perspective.

With some proprietary stacks, you need to purchase the operating system, multipathing, clustering, cluster file system, and virtualization software from different vendors and integrate them yourself. Not only is this solution much more expensive, you run the risk of vendors pointing fingers when things don't work as expected.

Compare this to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform. It includes the operating system, multipathing, clustering, cluster file system, and virtualization all in one integrated package. Not only is this solution less expensive, risk is lower because you have a single source of accountability if it doesn't work as expected.

Here is a great white paper that discusses this in detail:

http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/StackOverview_web.pdf

The reason why Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform is less expensive is because it costs Red Hat less to develop. We contribute to the community, and leverage what others contribute. Instead of only Red Hat looking at the code, anyone can. This requires us to develop quality software if we wish to get it accepted by the upstream community. Also, since anyone can look at the code, they can more easily report and track down bugs and submit patches if they desire.

The proprietary model on the other hand has less people looking at the code. In addition, since only they can see the code, engineers may be more likely to release code into production to meet the needs of management or product marketing deadlines which leads to software defects, security vulnerabilities, and ultimately customer dissatisfaction. Another problem with the proprietary model is that the proprietary software companies need to dedicate software engineers to write the entire product and they can't leverage what others have done in the community. In the case of operating systems, they need to pay engineers to write the compliers, window manager, kernel, everything. With open source, companies can leverage the work of others and narrowly focus on their differentiation which is a fraction of the cost of going it alone.

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Virginia: I just bought all the parts I need to build a really sweet personal computer, but I have not yet purchased an operating system. Why would you suggest I use Red Hat on my personal computer? Or is it only for businesses? P.S. Specs: AMD Phenom X4 2300Mhz Quad-Core, 4028Mb RAM, 500GB HDD

David Egts: Congratulations on your new hardware purchase!

You absolutely could run Red Hat Enterprise Linux on your computer. The desktop version could be a perfect fit.

If you are new to Linux, my first suggestion would be to try a live CD or USB edition of Linux. This will allow you to get comfortable with Linux to see if it is for you and if it meets your needs. Here is a link on how to build a bootable live USB version of Fedora using a Windows system and a 1 GB or larger thumb drive:

https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/

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New York, N.Y.: Security is obviously a big deal for government. What certifications do you have for Red Hat Enterprise Linux? Can you talk a little about the security of open source?

David Egts: I totally agree with you that security is a huge concern for the government. For years, Red Hat has been working with the NSA and others to co-develop SELinux.

http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/

By implementing SELinux natively and turning it on by default in all editions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are able to provide a mandatory access control model which is much more secure than a discretionary access control model.

Further, by building this into all versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, we are able to deliver a more secure solution for much less money as compared to alternative operating systems which have a mainstream version and a "trusted" version. The trusted version is a fork of the mainstream version that lags the mainstream version by months at best and has a smaller customer base. The trusted version typically costs significantly more because the software vendor spreads the cost of development of the trusted system across the small customer base. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SELinux is enabled by default on all editions allowing us to capitalize on economies of scale.

Through the use of SELinux and other components, Red Hat and its hardware partners have gone through government certification processes to ensure that Red Hat Enterprise Linux can run in select secure environments.

For a complete list of certifications and accreditations, please see this web site:

http://www.redhat.com/solutions/government/certifications/

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Washington, D.C.: I've been reading many articles and press around the cost benefits of open source solutions, and Linux specifically. With shrinking IT budgets in government, I'm realizing there is even more of a reason to research and consider moving more of my legacy systems running on proprietary software to Linux. Can you give us more detail as to why and how is Red Hat Enterprise Linux the more cost-effective operating system platform?

David Egts: One of the big reasons why customers have saved incredible amounts of money on migrating from proprietary solutions is that they are able to use commodity hardware.

With proprietary UNIX, you typically need to purchase the OS from the hardware vendor. As such, your choice is limited and the vendor has leverage over the customer in terms of price and choice.

With open source and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, it runs on hundreds of platforms ranging from commodity x86 servers to mainframes. As such, by standardizing on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can pit the hardware vendors against each other to deliver optimal value to you. If you don't like your current x86 server vendor, you can easily switch to another who delivers better ROI. The power shifts from the vendors' hands to your hands.

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Washington, D.C.: Isn't charging companies for leasing and/or training on open source software counter to the entire open purpose software? How can you make money off of something free?

David Egts: There are several ways to participate in the open source community. One way is to directly participate where you run your own projects or contribute to others. Another way to participate is to pay an open source vendor to code, support, and do community advocacy on your behalf. That's what Red Hat's customers do. At Red Hat we have approximately 3000 employees. About 1000 of them are engineers who are paid exclusively to write software and give it away. Paying Red Hat for software subscriptions allow customers to vote with their pocketbook as to what parts of the products are of most importance to them, and allow them to work with us to influence the community's road map on their behalf. It also pays for Red Hat customer support to proactively identify and fix bugs and security issues as well as provide direct customer support.

Here are some good links which describe the Red Hat business model in more detail and why customers choose Red Hat:

http://www.redhat.com/about/whysubscriptions
http://www.redhat.com/why_red_hat

In terms of training, Red Hat's Global Learning Services deliver the most recognized Linux and open source training and certification programs in the industry. The certifications of Red Hat Certified Technicians, Engineers, and Architects (RHCT, RHCE, RHCA) are recognized throughout the industry as some of the top certifications. By investing in these certifications, employers gain a third party assessment of the technical skills of their staff and potential employees. For the employee, Red Hat certification provides tangible evidence of their abilities to their current employer as well as opening up opportunities for advancement.

http://www.redhat.com/about/news/prarchive/2009/rhce10.html For more information about Red Hat Training, please see the following link:

http://www.redhat.com/training

I also recommend checking out the following IDC report that discusses the impact of RHCEs on enterprise IT performance:

https://www.redhat.com/whitepapers/training/205750_web.pdf

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Philadelphia, Pa.: What is the open source trend overseas? How is the U.S. trending in comparison?

David Egts: Outside the United States open source is thriving for several reasons.

National pride. Just like how we try to "buy American," people like to use software that was developed by their citizens. They also find the decentralized control of the software compelling as opposed to purchasing proprietary code from a vendor which may not reside in a country whose policies may not be in line with theirs.

National security. When they have the source code, they can audit it themselves to ensure that the code hasn't been inadvertently or overtly weakened to allow compromise.

Localization. By being developed around the world, localization of open source applications and documentation tends to happen by default. Also, this widespread localization breaks down more barriers to increase participation and creates a chain reaction of increased adoption.

Economics. Open source software puts technologies in the hands of people, especially children, who wouldn't be able to afford proprietary alternatives. This closes technology and education gaps between rich and poor nations. This accessibility also gives them an equal seat at the table in terms of future direction as active participants in the open source community.

For more information, check out these videos:

http://listman.redhat.com/videos/we_are_here.html
http://listman.redhat.com/videos/community/olpc.html

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San Francisco, Calif.: In your opinion, how will the huge amount of Federal spending that is about to occur immediately impact the current federal IT culture?

David Egts: From the public sector customers I've spoke with, many are welcoming the influx of spending to help them weather the current economic times. However, many of these customers have been struggling for some time with their current budgets and know that the quick hit of stimulus spending is only a temporary stopgap measure, and that cost effective solutions are essential for long term sustainability.

One customer told me that decisions will be made at the local level between buying expensive software or keeping police officers on the street. Politicians get votes for police officers, but not necessarily software purchases. When income and property tax revenue isn't coming in to sustain the current budgets of these local municipalities, the cuts will come down on IT spending before making reductions on public safety. As such, the IT managers see the writing on the wall and are acting quickly to reduce costs and maximize their IT investments.

Silver Spring, Md.: I am looking at virtualization as a way to cut costs and better utilize the systems in my data center. Can you talk a bit about Red Hat's virtualization strategy? Dave Egts: Certainly. Virtualization is playing an increasing role in today's data centers - about 20% by our measurements. We'd like to increase that percentage by introducing a range of product offerings that provide better management, faster and more efficient performance, lower cost, and better security than what's on the market today. This strategy started two years ago with us building virtualization into the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 core operating system for free which delivers 90%-95% of bare metal performance. The next step in our strategy was our acquisition of Qumranet which provided us the leads of the KVM virtualization project as well as their Solid ICE virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) product. The next stages are to combine these technologies into commercially supported open source products that include the addition of KVM to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, management tools for virtual servers and desktops, and a very lean and fast embedded hypervisor.

For more details including an excellent white paper, please check out the following link:

http://www.redhat.com/virtualization-strategy/

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Arlington, Va.: Can you explain Linux, it's been there for a long time correct?

David Egts: Linux is commonly known as a UNIX-like operating system based upon the Linux kernel which dates back to August, 1991.

Wikipedia has a fantastic article about the history of Linux here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

Red Hat was one of the first companies to ever to build a business around open source in general and Linux specifically. Red Hat was established in 1993 and the first release of Red Hat Linux was in 1994. Over time, Red Hat has grown from a Linux company for enthusiasts to the company of choice for enterprise grade Linux. Today, Red Hat is even growing further from being a Linux company to being a provider of choice for open source technologies ranging from operating systems to middleware and data services to virtualization.

Here is a very good link chronicling the history of Red Hat:

http://www.redhat.com/about/companyprofile/history

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Greenbelt, Md.: Are all cloud computing platforms open source?

David Egts: Actually there are a variety of cloud implementations with a range of software licensing models. Some are completely open source, some are proprietary, and some are a hybrid mix of proprietary services hosted on top of open source software.

As one example, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform are certified to run on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

You can also run Red Hat Enterprise MRG grid computing software on EC2. In fact, your MRG grid can be located at your facility, at Amazon, or both all controllable on demand. Here is a link for more information:

http://www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud

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Washington, D.C.: How would I calculate how much I can save my agency by using Open source or cloud computing? What are the most common variables?

David Egts: I wouldn't look at it as an "all or nothing" kind of migration. You don't have to be all proprietary or all open source. A phased hybrid model makes perfect sense to minimize risk and disruption. What I would do is migrate one piece at a time where it makes good business sense.

Specifically, I'd take a look at your current software stacks in use. Identify which parts of your stacks can be replaced with open source technologies. Replace the low hanging fruit to get some quick wins that provide the biggest ROI and increase stakeholder buy in. Reinvest the cost savings into finding the next part of the stack to replace. Repeat.

Here is a very good and brief video series and white paper that discuss this process:

http://www.redhat.com/promo/streamline/overview
http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/StackOverview_web.pdf

Moving forward, I would recommend mandating that all new software projects embrace open standards. Even if proprietary software is the only or best solution at the time, conforming to open standards give you the freedom to change software vendors if needed which results in pricing leverage shifting from the proprietary vendor to you.

Red Hat offers a cost savings migration assessment service. We'll take a look at what you have, see where you can save by migrating to open source, and then come up with an actionable plan that also shows the projected cost savings. Once you have that plan, you can implement it yourself, or continue to work with Red Hat consultants to complete the migration.

https://www.redhat.com/promo/assessment
http://www.redhat.com/consulting

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Silver Spring, Md.: In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge when making the initial switch to an open source system?

David Egts: Many look at open source software as being "free as in beer." In reality, open source software is free as in freedom.

When many adopt open source, they look at the initial acquisition cost of being close to $0 because they can download the bits and stand something up very quickly. However, the challenge comes in with respect to long term support which is often overlooked.

When switching to open source, I highly recommend factoring the support costs. You can definitely provide the support yourself internally, but that means that you need to have people on your staff supporting the open source code which may not be strategic to your business. For some, this model is totally fine.

An alternative would be to outsource the support and development to a commercial open source vendor such as Red Hat. That way your staff can focus even more on strategic efforts that focus on customer value. And at the same time you have a professional organization who has your back if something goes wrong in the middle of the night or over a weekend.

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Poway, Calif.: Do you feel Scott McNealy is a good person to try and champion Open Source initiatives and solutions for the new administration? Do you feel he is doing a good job?

David Egts: Mr. McNealy of Sun Microsystems is one of several voices (in addition to Red Hat) who have been quite active to help provide guidance to the new administration with respect to open source. Sun Microsystems is a great partner of Red Hat and we welcome all voices who articulate the value of open source.

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State College, Pa.: Will the open source movement defeat Microsoft in the marketplace?

David Egts: I wish all the best for Microsoft and wish no ill will towards them.

The business models that they have been employing over their existence have proven to be very successful over the years. Back when they started and as they rose to significant market success, open source wasn't as prominent as it is today however.

Back in the early days, Microsoft was the insurgent who was lean and scrappy and was encroaching in the market space of the dominant players. Their business model allowed them to outmaneuver their competition which ultimately placed them in a position of market dominance.

Now open source is the insurgent encroaching on Microsoft's turf. In some respects, innovators in the open source community are able to act more quickly and deliver better products and online services.

I'm very interested to see how the future plays out. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft took an increasingly more receptive stance towards open source similar to the transitions and adoptions made by Sun Microsystems, Apple, IBM, and others.

I reject the notion that the opposite of open source is Microsoft. Open source is a development methodology and a business model. Microsoft is a company who develops products to best serve their customers. The two are not mutually exclusive where Microsoft could quite possibly embrace open source to deliver optimal customer value.

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Moderator: That is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much for being with us today.

David Egts: Wow. Lots of great questions. The hour went by so quickly! Thank you all for attending!

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