The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company has created Red Hat Software Beijing Co Ltd to work with partners such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Oracle, as well as local vendors to promote open source software in China.
Red Hat Beijing’s first task will be to support Linux and open source education by making the Red Hat Academy educational program freely available to students across the country. The company is working with Tsinghua University and Nanjing University to establish the program and deliver Linux and open source training to students at China’s schools and colleges.
Open source software, and particularly Linux, has a critical role to play both in advancing the development of China’s rapidly growing software industry and in creating the best information infrastructure for China’s globally competitive enterprises, said Red Hat CEO, Matthew Szulik.
Red Hat first mooted the establishment of a presence in China back in January, along with a potential relationship with Red Flag Software Co Ltd, the biggest Linux distributor in China. While no deal has come to fruition, Red Hat has been boosting its Asian operation.
The company appointed a new vice president of regional operations for Asia Pacific in June, with Stephen McWhirter joining from IBM Corp’s Asian sales operation. Red Hat earned $16.9 million, or 13.4% of its total revenue from unaffiliated customers from Asia Pacific and Japan in its latest financial year ended February 29, 2004, compared to $86.7 million (68.8%) from North America, and $22.4 million (17.8%) from Europe. Asia Pac revenue was up from $11.8 million (12.9%) the previous year.
