Open source software provider Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) released for general availability Red Hat CloudForms, an open hybrid cloud management platform designed to enable enterprise customers to deploy and manage IaaS hybrid clouds, with the opportunity to provide computing resources to users “in a managed, governed and secure way.”

During the webcast announcing CloudForms, Red Hat strove to make the vendor-agnostic nature of the platform clear to the audience. Customers can create an open hybrid cloud based on a wide variety of infrastructure, and from multiple vendors — even using public cloud resources — while enjoying flexibility, agility and control.

“CloudForms enables enterprises to use infrastructure ranging from virtual to public cloud resources together in an open hybrid cloud architecture and is a game-changer for enterprises leveraging the power of the cloud,” said Brian Stevens, CTO and VP, Worldwide Engineering at Red Hat, in a prepared statement. “We recognize that for a complete open hybrid cloud, enterprises need more than just the management layer – they also need openness and portability across compute, data/services, programming models and applications. Red Hat is the only vendor that can deliver a portfolio of solutions to meets these needs, and we’ve further extended this … with the availability of a new cloud platform with groundbreaking features via CloudForms.”

With the CloudForms launch, Red Hat now provides infrastructure stack services including: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, Red Hat Storage and numerous certified ISV applications.

Our own Joe Panettieri recently noted that Red Hat will face tough competition from IaaS alternatives OpenStack, CloudStack, VMware Cloud Foundry and Windows Azure. Red Hat is openly counting on its Certified Cloud Provider network to promote CloudForms along with its new open source PaaS OpenShift.