Analyst: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 would strengthen Red Hat’s position in the market

Analysts believe Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 would strengthen Red Hat’s position in the market

W.R. Hambrecht & Co. financial analyst Robert Stimson has wrote in a research note that Red Hat would gain massively from their upcoming launch of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 product.

He wrote that this new version is quite capable of challenging the competition from rivals including Oracle, Microsoft, and Novell.

He said that he is “confident that Red Hat will remain the premier Linux player despite recent competitive hoopla.”

The company is facing intense pressure from the investors ever since Oracle announced it would undercut Red Hat on the price of support for Red Hat’s open source Linux distribution.

After that Novell announced a deal with Microsoft which see both the companies working together to make Windows interoperable with SUSE Linux. Microsoft is also helping Novell by marketing their products to their customers.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is expected to include an integrated server and storage virtualization capability. Stimson further added that the backlash Novell is facing from the open source community is only going to help Red Hat in the long run.