Red Hat Global Desktop and Client Computing Roadmap

Red Hat announced the availability of a new client product, Red Hat Global Desktop. In addition, the Company showcased several examples of its strategy of building forward-looking solutions that change the traditional notion of desktop computing for specific audiences and creating experiences that are more useful, more powerful and more accessible.

"Users, requirements and technologies have changed so dramatically over the past few years that the traditional one-size-fits-all desktop paradigm is simply exhausted. Commercial customers are still begging for desktop security and manageability for their knowledge workers; consumers are rapidly adopting new online services and applications; and developing nations are looking for affordable information technologies that bypass traditional desktops entirely," said Brian Stevens, CTO of Red Hat. "Our strategy is to deliver technologies that are specifically appropriate to these varied constituents, all based on open standards."
Desktop for Emerging Markets

Today Red Hat is announcing the upcoming availability of Red Hat Global Desktop. Global Desktop breaks through the price and performance barriers that have prevented many people from realizing the full benefits of state-of-the-art information technology. Red Hat and community members around the world recognized the need for a better solution to serve their local government and small business customers. This required removing the limitations that traditional desktop solutions imposed. In response, Red Hat developed the Global Desktop, which delivers a modern-user experience with an enterprise-class suite of productivity applications. Red Hat collaborated closely with Intel to enable the design, support and distribution of Global Desktop to be as close as possible to the customer. In addition, Red Hat and Intel are taking advantage of Global Desktop's high performance and minimal hardware requirements to support a wide range of Intel's current and future desktop platforms, including the Classmate, Affordable, Community and Low-Cost PC lines.

"To address the demand for Linux on desktop systems by our customers in emerging markets, Intel and Red Hat worked together to deliver a pre-certified, cost-effective solution for Intel's reseller channel to extend their business value," said Steve Dallman, General Manager, Intel Worldwide Reseller Channel Organization. "Running Red Hat Global Desktop on Intel processor-powered PCs provides full access to applications and rich experiences to users across local markets, education, small businesses and government agencies."
Desktop for the Enterprise

With the March release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5, Red Hat continued its vision to reduce the cost and complexity of desktop security and administration for enterprises. The foundation is a platform with security engineered in from the ground up, providing an integrated and layered defense against attacks without requiring the customer to buy third-party products. On top of that foundation, Red Hat provides a comprehensive set of management tools that simplify the administration of desktop deployments, at scales spanning from 10 to 10,000 systems. Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop delivers all of this without requiring customers to invest in new or upgraded hardware. In the future, Red Hat plans to unveil a new model for protecting the privacy of critical data to meet the needs of environments such as financial services, healthcare and government institutions.
One Laptop Per Child and the Next Desktop Paradigm

In 2006, Red Hat partnered with the One Laptop Per Child foundation to design and develop the user interface and operating system for a revolutionary laptop that aims to redefine education in developing nations. Tremendous progress has been made with the project moving from the drawing board to fully functional hardware and software in record time. In fact, OLPC laptops are in the hands of children in developing nations today.

Red Hat's continuing investments are aimed at developing next-generation desktop user experiences where online services are ubiquitous and information is hosted in a virtual environment. This will support a world where client computing user experiences are online, global, pervasive and span a wide range of new devices.

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