City of Chicago Realizes Cost Savings and Performance Gains on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

  
    
  
  
    
      Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source 
      solutions to the enterprise, today announced the City of Chicago’s 
      successful migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for essential 
      government programs, including the vehicle registration system, online 
      job applications, restaurant inspections, ethics training and more. The 
      City of Chicago migrated to Red Hat in order to reduce costs and improve 
      support, performance and scalability. The city has already saved more 
      than $250,000, and is reducing server hardware, maintenance and 
      operating costs as a result of Oracle's certification and support 
      infrastructure on Red Hat.
    
    
      For the City of Chicago, information technology (IT) is an integral part 
      of the government’s processes and services to 
      the city’s nearly 3 million residents. City 
      officials, led by Mayor Richard M. Daley, have embraced a Transparent 
      Government initiative and are committed to running an open, responsive 
      and fiscally responsible government. As a result, the city’s 
      information systems department is committed to putting technology in 
      place to help the government meet its operational objectives.
    
    
      The city's infrastructure had historically been a multi-platform 
      environment that included about 100 Solaris servers used to run a large 
      number of Oracle databases and applications. As these servers neared the 
      end of their life cycles, the City of Chicago began the migration to 
      cost-effective Red Hat solutions.
    
    
      The first City of Chicago program migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 
      was the motor vehicle department’s online 
      registration renewal, City Stickers. This program manages and tracks all 
      vehicle permits and provides an online registration component where 
      Chicago residents may purchase and renew stickers via the web.
    
    
      “We needed to enhance the functionality,” 
      said Amy Niersbach, Platform Architect for the City of Chicago. “Support 
      was a major issue as our maintenance had turned very costly. As a 
      result, we were focused on the support aspect and the Oracle 
      certification. We liked the approach that Red Hat took to support the 
      City of Chicago, and Oracle's certification and support infrastructure 
      on Red Hat sealed the deal for Chicago's IT decision makers.”
    
    
      Impressive results were immediately noted by the City Clerk’s 
      office responsible for the City Stickers program. Sun Solaris 
      benchmarked at 50,268 transactions per minute, while the HP DL580 G2 
      with Red Hat Enterprise Linux benchmarked at over 149,500 transactions 
      per minute. When running the city's long batch cycles, Red Hat 
      Enterprise Linux proved to be 50 percent faster. The significantly 
      improved performance has increased total revenue for the project as 
      well. The city has seen a significant increase in online renewals since 
      implementing the system, and expects overall revenues to continue to 
      rise as the application is more fully leveraged.
    
    
      “People can now renew vehicle registrations 
      online. It’s faster and more efficient for 
      them, and they get their stickers faster,” 
      Niersbach said.
    
    
      Today, the server platform supporting the City Stickers program consists 
      of Oracle 9i Real Application Cluster (RAC) and Oracle 10g RAC database 
      servers and a BEA WebLogic server. Based on the significant increase in 
      overall performance, the city has future plans to migrate two more 
      Oracle database servers from Sun to HP and Red Hat. In addition to the 
      performance improvement, the City of Chicago experienced significant 
      cost savings by migrating to Red Hat. City officials estimated the cost 
      of replacing each of their previous Sun Enterprise 6500 servers at 
      $300,000. Instead, they selected HP servers running Red Hat Enterprise 
      Linux at $50,000 each. Maintenance costs have also declined.
    
    
      “Our main priorities when evaluating our 
      planned Solaris-to-Linux migration were three-fold: user support, 
      reduction in cost and compatibility with our current vendor,” 
      said Niersbach. “The results of our migration 
      to Red Hat have dramatically exceeded our expectations and have helped 
      us find a better way to deliver government services.”
    
    
      For more information on Red Hat Enterprise solutions, please visit http://www.redhat.com. 
      
    
    
      About Red Hat, Inc.
    
    
      Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is 
      headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. 
      CIOs and other senior-level IT executives have ranked Red Hat as the 
      industry's most valued vendor for two consecutive years in the CIO 
      Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat is leading Linux and open 
      source solutions into the mainstream by making high-quality, low-cost 
      technology accessible. Red Hat provides an operating system platform, 
      Red Hat Enterprise Linux, along with applications, management, and 
      middleware solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite. Red 
      Hat is accelerating the shift to service-oriented architectures and 
      enabling the next generation of web-enabled applications running on a 
      low-cost, secure open source platform. Red Hat also offers support, 
      training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through 
      top-tier partnerships. Red Hat's open source strategy offers customers a 
      long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and 
      leverage open source technologies with a focus on security and ease of 
      management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.
    
    
      Forward-Looking Statements
    
    
      Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute 
      "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private 
      Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements 
      provide current expectations of future events based on certain 
      assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to 
      any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially 
      from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of 
      various important factors, including: risks related to the integration 
      of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete; the 
      inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the 
      potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to 
      third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information 
      security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, 
      the Company's growth and international operations; adverse results in 
      litigation; the dependence on key personnel as well as other factors 
      contained in in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of 
      which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's 
      website at http://www.sec.gov), 
      including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and 
      "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results 
      of Operations". In addition, the forward-looking statements included in 
      this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this 
      press release and these views could change. However, while the Company 
      may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in 
      the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. 
      These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as 
      representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date 
      of the press release.
    
    
      LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT and JBOSS are registered 
      trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the US and other 
      countries.
    
  
Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open
source solutions to the enterprise, today announced the City of
Chicago's successful migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux for
essential government programs, including the vehicle registration
system, online job applications, restaurant inspections, ethics
training and more. The City of Chicago migrated to Red Hat in order to
reduce costs and improve support, performance and scalability. The
city has already saved more than $250,000, and is reducing server
hardware, maintenance and operating costs as a result of Oracle's
certification and support infrastructure on Red Hat.

   For the City of Chicago, information technology (IT) is an
integral part of the government's processes and services to the city's
nearly 3 million residents. City officials, led by Mayor Richard M.
Daley, have embraced a Transparent Government initiative and are
committed to running an open, responsive and fiscally responsible
government. As a result, the city's information systems department is
committed to putting technology in place to help the government meet
its operational objectives.

   The city's infrastructure had historically been a multi-platform
environment that included about 100 Solaris servers used to run a
large number of Oracle databases and applications. As these servers
neared the end of their life cycles, the City of Chicago began the
migration to cost-effective Red Hat solutions.

   The first City of Chicago program migrated to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux was the motor vehicle department's online registration renewal,
City Stickers. This program manages and tracks all vehicle permits and
provides an online registration component where Chicago residents may
purchase and renew stickers via the web.

   "We needed to enhance the functionality," said Amy Niersbach,
Platform Architect for the City of Chicago. "Support was a major issue
as our maintenance had turned very costly. As a result, we were
focused on the support aspect and the Oracle certification. We liked
the approach that Red Hat took to support the City of Chicago, and
Oracle's certification and support infrastructure on Red Hat sealed
the deal for Chicago's IT decision makers."

   Impressive results were immediately noted by the City Clerk's
office responsible for the City Stickers program. Sun Solaris
benchmarked at 50,268 transactions per minute, while the HP DL580 G2
with Red Hat Enterprise Linux benchmarked at over 149,500 transactions
per minute. When running the city's long batch cycles, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux proved to be 50 percent faster. The significantly
improved performance has increased total revenue for the project as
well. The city has seen a significant increase in online renewals
since implementing the system, and expects overall revenues to
continue to rise as the application is more fully leveraged.

   "People can now renew vehicle registrations online. It's faster
and more efficient for them, and they get their stickers faster,"
Niersbach said.

   Today, the server platform supporting the City Stickers program
consists of Oracle 9i Real Application Cluster (RAC) and Oracle 10g
RAC database servers and a BEA WebLogic server. Based on the
significant increase in overall performance, the city has future plans
to migrate two more Oracle database servers from Sun to HP and Red
Hat. In addition to the performance improvement, the City of Chicago
experienced significant cost savings by migrating to Red Hat. City
officials estimated the cost of replacing each of their previous Sun
Enterprise 6500 servers at $300,000. Instead, they selected HP servers
running Red Hat Enterprise Linux at $50,000 each. Maintenance costs
have also declined.

   "Our main priorities when evaluating our planned Solaris-to-Linux
migration were three-fold: user support, reduction in cost and
compatibility with our current vendor," said Niersbach. "The results
of our migration to Red Hat have dramatically exceeded our
expectations and have helped us find a better way to deliver
government services."

   For more information on Red Hat Enterprise solutions, please visit
http://www.redhat.com.

   About Red Hat, Inc.

   Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is
headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the
globe. CIOs and other senior-level IT executives have ranked Red Hat
as the industry's most valued vendor for two consecutive years in the
CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat is leading Linux and
open source solutions into the mainstream by making high-quality,
low-cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides an operating system
platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, along with applications,
management, and middleware solutions, including JBoss Enterprise
Middleware Suite. Red Hat is accelerating the shift to
service-oriented architectures and enabling the next generation of
web-enabled applications running on a low-cost, secure open source
platform. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting
services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships.
Red Hat's open source strategy offers customers a long term plan for
building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source
technologies with a focus on security and ease of management. Learn
more: http://www.redhat.com.

   Forward-Looking Statements

   Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute
"forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements
provide current expectations of future events based on certain
assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to
any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially
from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of
various important factors, including: risks related to the integration
of acquisitions; the ability of the Company to effectively compete;
the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and
the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or
relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data
and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of,
and control over, the Company's growth and international operations;
adverse results in litigation; the dependence on key personnel as well
as other factors contained in in our most recent Quarterly Report on
Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and
Exchange Commission's website at http://www.sec.gov), including those
found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's
Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of
Operations". In addition, the forward-looking statements included in
this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of
this press release and these views could change. However, while the
Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some
point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation
to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon
as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the
date of the press release.

   LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT and JBOSS are
registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. and its subsidiaries in the US
and other countries.