Red Hat, IBM Counter VMware In Gov’t Virtualization Market

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) are countering VMware (NYSE: VMW) in the government market, promoting a secure virtualization platform on IBM x86 servers. But here’s the twist: VMware has offered a similar level of security since at least 2010. Here’s what channel partners need to know.

The background: Red Hat promotes KVM (kernel-based virtual machine) as the open source foundation for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV). Also, RHEV is built into Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

So what’s the security news? Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with the KVM hypervisor running on IBM Systems has earned the Common Criteria Certification at Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL4+). According to Red Hat and IBM:

“The Common Criteria is an internationally recognized set of standards used by the federal government and other organizations to assess the security and assurance of technology products. This security certification is the first of its kind for an open source virtualization solution.”

As a result, The Red Hat-IBM solution could appeal to channel partners focused on homeland security projects, command-and-control operations, and government agencies that “previously were limited to proprietary virtualization technologies,” IBM and Red Hat assert.

Translation: Red Hat and IBM are taking aim at VMware. But VMware sounds like it’s prepared for the showdown. Indeed, VMware earned EAL4+ certification back in 2010. And this past weekend, VMware described how it is working with Kaspersky Lab to further bolster secure virtualization.