Red Hat's CEO, Brian Stevens, has in a webcast announced his company's virtualization strategy for 2009.

Stevens presented Red Hat's virtualization plans as a logical extension of its previous steps, such as the cooperation with Microsoft and the acquisition of KVM specialists, Qumranet.

KVM represents the core of virtualization technology and is part of the official Linux kernel. According to Navin Thadani, Senior Director, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, (RHEL) 5.4 will, thanks to KVM, be able to accommodate Virtualization Business, Windows and Linux guests. Red Hat will however, continue to provide the current Xen Virtualization while simplifying the migration of its customers to KVM.

A further component in the Red Hat virtualization portfolio is the Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers, which boasts scalability, high availability features and a live migration capability. A Virtualization Manager for desktop PCs with a SPICE / SolidICE base completes the profile.
Also planned is a stateless hypervisor; a minimum Linux system with KVM as host, which Red Hat hopes will attract new customers who have no urge to buy a complete Linux Enterprise server.
The first products of the new strategy should hit the markets mid 2009, with the complete portfolio appearing within the next 18 months.

In addition, all products of the manufacturers in Red Hat's partner program are deemed to be virtualization compatible.

Red Hat's CEO, Brian Stevens, has in a webcast announced his company's virtualization strategy for 2009.