Reduce IT costs and improve efficiency with an enterprise Linux subscription

There is a common misconception that open source software is a lower cost, competitive solution for running highly available, reliable, and critical workloads in datacenters and cloud deployments. In addition, people assume that an enterprise subscription is only for support. However, enterprise products like Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® build on community technology to bring innovation, usability, and stability that can be critical for IT teams to maintain systems efficiently and pivot to new projects when necessary. IDC interviewed Red Hat customers to understand the effect on their IT departments when they migrated workloads from community software. On average, organizations saved US$43,600 per 100 users. This research highlights several key effects of switching from community projects to paid enterprise open source projects: - Certain activities are required for stable software and must be done by a vendor or an IT team, resulting in lower productivity -Using enterprise versions of open source software can increase IT efficiency, reduce hardware costs, and improve infrastructure resiliency -There are clearer, more mature avenues for critical maintenance activities, like identifying vulnerabilities, applying patches, and upgrading systems when compared to community projects -Benefits cover a variety of different areas, from direct financial savings and improved productivity to reduced cost and lost time

Speakers

Greg Macatee | Senior Research Analyst, Infrastructure Software Platforms, IDC

Greg Macatee is a Senior Research Analyst within IDC’s Enterprise Infrastructure Practice. His coverage area consists of a mix of server, storage, converged, and purpose-built backup appliance (PBBA) markets in the hardware space, in addition to contributing to a variety of IDC's Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers. He also covers storage software and operating systems, both on-site and in cloud environments, with a particular interest in the open source developer community.

Dan Pacek | RHEL Market & Competitive Intelligence Manager, Red Hat

Dan Pacek is an RHEL Market & Competitive Intelligence Manager at Red Hat. He performs ongoing, real-time research and analysis of customer requirements and vendor offerings in the enterprise server and software markets. His analysis is a key component in the development and deployment decisions that keep Red Hat’s platform product and service offerings competitive.