Red Hat & Virtualization

Red Hat put out a series of announcements showing how RHEL 5.1 has better support for virtualization using the Xen kernel and how RHEL can now be purchased “in the cloud” via Amazon’s EC2 service. This is a good move by both companies since it helps position Red Hat as an innovator and it shows that Amazon’s EC2 service lets you use the #1 Linux, thereby reducing possible compatibility or skills issues.

Amazon’s EC2 and the related S3 storage offering are both ways of having hosted, on-demand infrastructure for scale-out applications. I’m not sure if these are getting mainstream adoption from IT organizations, but if you’re looking at building a startup company and don’t want to invest a ton in hardware, it’s a good way to get started. As it matures, I have no doubt that the cloud-based computing model will become increasingly important for IT and that we’ll need to update our notion of software to run optimized in such an environment. But it may be the case that adoption of these technologies sneaks in through the back door –despite IT –rather than with IT’s blessings.

As an analogy, consider how Salesforce.com and open source technology in general have made their way into the enterprise. Many sales and marketing organizations that went with salesforce.com or other on demand applications likely did so because it meant they would not have to work with their overburdened IT staff. And since the price point was low enough (well under $100 per person per month) they could just take on the expense directly. My guess is in some cases, they only told IT after the fact. Heck, maybe this is true of a lot of innovation.

So maybe Amazon and Red Hat’s latest announcement will enable a similar adoption of “name brand” Linux in departmental applications. This is completely speculative, but I’m curious as to what others think… Would you consider using EC2 without involving your IT department?