Opennet announces new desktop solution from RedHat

In March 2004, Red Hat announced a partnership with Wind River to jointly pursue the device market, with a standard open source platform.

The Red Hat Desktop is a secure, manageable solution for the enterprise and is targeted at Government, Academic and Enterprise IT organizations. It is a productive environment that features mature open source office applications including an e-mail client, browser and office suite.

"The Red Hat Desktop will be made available in configurations which include either Red Hat Network Proxy or Satellite Servers," said Tewfik Zitouni, MD, Opennet. A Proxy or Satellite Server deployment enables several clients to be deployed and managed simultaneously, and greatly simplifies the ongoing security and management of systems.

Future enhancements to Red Hat's desktop strategy will focus on productivity and interoperability with the support of key industry partners. Partners such as VMWare, Real, Macromedia, Adobe and Citrix are working to certify applications to enable great cross-functionality with other technologies. In parallel, Red Hat will continue work with Wind River to address thin client computing and the device marketplace.

"By building thin clients and devices based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, customers will have access to flexible open source technology for a broader range of solutions, from single-purpose call centre clients to handhelds," pointed out Zitouni. "For the first time, developers will be able to standardize device software development across the enterprise that today requires a truly collaborative infrastructure that enables next-generation devices to exchange data with enterprise computers running highly available applications. In order to connect the device to the enterprise efficiently, companies must optimize device software development."

At the launch of the desktop in London recently, Matthew Szulik, Red Hat Chairman and CEO, announced a long-term client strategy. He explained how Red Hat's client strategy was forged from the need for choice in the technology industry to drive innovation and forward thinking.

"Open source is now causing the enterprise to question traditional models of software and application availability," Szulik said. "This is an architectural alternative that extends from devices, through the network, and into the data centre, deployable and flexible without concern of lock-in."

Red Hat's strategy will bring the security, manageability and reliability of open source to the client environment. Existing Red Hat customers will benefit from a consistent platform for both client and server applications and new customers will have the opportunity to pilot and integrate flexible open source alternatives. The client strategy is an extension of Open Source Architecture designed to enable open source in the enterprise by providing breadth and depth of open source and partner-certified solutions.

The new desktop application will be available in the Middle East from May. According to Zitouni, Opennet sees very few technical reasons why users should not adopt the new Red Hat desktop. "From a technical perspective, it will be very easy to install using technologies developed by Red Hat such as KickStart," he pointed out. "It is very simple to administer, manage and update thanks to the management modules and RHN Proxy/Satellite."

From an end user perspective, and in addition to the availability of all office software, Opennet MEA will be assisting Red Hat users with customized ExpressTraining for using Red Hat Desktop.

"It is still early to have exact figures and studies, but we can already forecast a important advantage over classical deployments," said Zitouni. "One also needs to consider losses due to viruses and worms that are infecting virtually all Windows platforms. These security issues and financial losses are irrelevant to Red Hat Secure Desktop."