Nov. 5, 2009 (Business Wire) -- Red Hat (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced momentum in support for high-end workloads on Linux with the expansion of its Advanced Mission-Critical Program offering for customers. Long-time Red Hat partner Hitachi Ltd., a leading global electronics company with headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, has joined the Advanced Mission-Critical Program and will offer expanded services for mission-critical customers in Japan in collaboration with Red Hat.

Red Hat announced the Advanced Mission-Critical Program in November 2008, combining substantially enhanced service levels with the proven advantages of Linux for workloads previously only thought to be supported on more expensive legacy platforms. The worldwide program was designed to deliver unprecedented services levels, support and decade-long product lifecycles for participating Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. Benefits offered by the program include reduced operating costs, reduced acquisition costs and exceptional availability for mission-critical customers.

“Red Hat's Advanced Mission-Critical Program is designed to enable customers to reduce costs while providing the reliability, availability and scalability needed for the most demanding mission-critical applications. We are pleased to announce Hitachi's participation in this program, extending the benefits of Linux to an even greater number of customers,” said Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Platform Business Unit at Red Hat. “Hitachi joins the Advanced Mission-Critical Program in providing Red Hat Enterprise Linux to critical workloads throughout Japan.”

As a Red Hat Advanced Mission-Critical partner, Hitachi is now able to provide new support options to high-end customers with mission-critical needs leveraging Red Hat Enterprise Linux in Japan. These expanded Red Hat Enterprise Linux support options include a 10-year life cycle, the ability to standardize on a single update release for up to 18 months and proactive notification to reduce system disruption.

“To support the needs of the most demanding, mission-critical workloads, such as for maintaining our social infrastructure platforms, wide experience with and specialized knowledge for mainframe-class systems are the key,” said Daisuke Sasaki, general manager, Hitachi, Ltd. “In joining Red Hat's Advanced Mission-Critical Program, we combine Hitachi’s mainframe expertise and Red Hat's Enterprise Linux expertise to provide enhanced services to customers. We believe that these new support options will bring greater benefit to mission-critical customers in Japan.”

Advanced Mission-Critical offerings are available from Hitachi and Red Hat today.