Quoting SDAIndia

Red Hat has revealed that the Red Hat ISV Partner Program has experienced record growth, posting an increase in certified software partners by 122 percent in the last six months, April through October 2006. The company targeted application providers in industry verticals where open source adoption is happening rapidly, healthcare, telecommunications and financial services. While continuing the drive for reliable solutions in these vertical areas, Red Hat will work to identify partners that specialise in solutions complementary to its virtualisation and Service-Oriented Architecture strategies in 2007, the company said.

In addition to targeting strategic industries, Red Hat has expanded the variety of benefits and services available to ISV ecosystem partners. With a number of new marketing and technical benefits included in the partner program, the ISV community has responded favorably, further contributing to growth, the company added.

"Demand for open source is happening in virtually all industry sectors around the world, but in 2006, healthcare, telecommunications and financial services emerged as the top industries for enterprise adoption of open source," said Tim Yeaton, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Solutions, Red Hat. "The next areas for real value delivery for the customers will be virtualisation as part of the SOA. We are already collaborating with customers to complement our concentration on these technologies. The net will be a complete, reliable, high-value solution for the customer."

"Virtualisation and SOA are two of the key business productivity opportunities in the market today," said Tony Iams, Vice President for System Software Research, Ideas International. "The open source model and ecosystem are well suited for helping global enterprises and vertical industries to realise immense benefits from these new industry drivers."

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