(July 9, 2003) - The largest managed hosting company in the US, Rackspace, and one of the the world’s premier open source and Linux providers, Red Hat, announce that they have partnered to provide a fail-safe environment for enterprises to run complex operations on the Linux platform.

As the first managed hosting provider to roll out Red Hat Enterprise Linux to its customer base, Rackspace will rely on its proven Linux expertise to guide enterprises through the configuration and deployment process. By joining forces, the thinking by Red Hat and Rackspace is that they can simplify the global adoption of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for customers seeking a hosted environment.

"We're making it easy for companies to deploy Linux," says Dirk Elmendorf, chief technology evangelist of Rackspace Managed Hosting. "Our relationship with Red Hat demonstrates our mutual commitment to deliver fully-integrated enterprise software backed by world-class support and infrastructure."

Elmendorf adds that the Rackspace-Red Hat offering "can scale to meet customers' future business requirements, while accelerating the enterprises' adoption of Linux."

"Rackspace is an ideal partner to deliver and support Red Hat Enterprise Linux," says Mike Evans, vice president of Channel Sales and Development at Red Hat. He references Rackspace's reputation for delivering hosted solutions and its considerable prior experience with Linux.

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the de facto standard for Linux, now provides upgrades on a 12-18 month release schedule, resulting in the stability of a true enterprise-class platform," he adds.

Whenever Linux delivers on the promise of fully-integrated enterprise software backed by world-class support and infrastructure, its adoption rate within the enterprise space goes up a notch - today then it went up, maybe, two.

Time will tell.