Red Hat India betting big on Indian operations

With the open source architecture of Linux finding greater acceptance by corporates and the government segment in the country, Red Hat India Private Limited is betting big on its India operations. It is at present examining various regions for setting up its development centre in the country. It already has a multi-language lab in Pune working on desktop applications.

Javed Tapia, director of Red Hat India Private Limited, said here yesterday that the company would focus on spreading its reach in the country and popularising its desktop applications for the individuals and small office home office (Soho) segment. He said the company would also be doubling the number of its channel partners and training partners during the year. At present, it has 50 channel partners and 65 training partners.

Red Hat is also making efforts to increase the number of Linux developers in the country. It also runs highly rated certification programmes Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) and Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA). There are around 2,000 RHCEs in the country and the company expects the number to touch 3,000 by March-end next year. India already accounts for the second largest Linux developers' base, the first being the US.

Red Hat is also sponsoring a scholarship programme in co-ordination with IIT, Mumbai. The final-year engineering students across the country can enroll for the programme and do projects based in eight challenging categories. Around 2,000 final year B Tech students have already enrolled for the programme which commenced in March this year.

Tapia said that Red Hat had become most popular Linux version in the country and it was even being adopted in place of other Linux versions because of the consistent professional services rendered by the company. Apart from the cost factor, mission-critical applications and support system are fuelling the growth of Red Hat in the country, he said. In Andhra Pradesh, Red Hat already took part in the networking of treasuries department and is currently involved in the Computer-aided Administration of Registration Department (CARD).

On the focus on desktop applications, he said that Red Hat, having already achieved expertise in client-server environment, only had to popularise these applications which are equally user-friendly and virus-free as well.