The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company first outlined the potential for RHX, as it is known, during the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 in March, as a means of strengthening Red Hat’s relationship with its partners.
RHX is essentially an online marketplace where customers can subscribe to pre-integrated open source software stacks with a single point of support and contact, as well as finding information on products from both vendors and the user community.
For example, customers can buy a one-year subscription to the Network Professional Edition of Zimbra’s collaboration suite along with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 for $1,895, for which they get installation and configuration support, two-business-day email and web support, and unlimited incidents.
As well as Zimbra, RHX partners include Alfresco, CentricCRM, Compiere, EnterpriseDB, Groundwork, Jaspersoft, MySQL, Openfire, Pentaho, SugarCRM, Zenoss, and Zmanda. Scalix has also signed up to the program although its software is not available from RHX at this time.
Each subscription includes the same level of support, although they are all priced differently and some also contain additional Red Hat software. For example the Alfresco subscription also comes with the Red Hat Application Stack of MySQL, JBoss Application Server, and Hibernate, as well as the Red Hat Network for managing updates, for $4,595.
In addition to the online marketplace, RHX is also an information resource with official installation guides and an area for unofficial community questions and answers, and feedback. There is also the opportunity for users to review the available offerings.
