Red Hat has launched a program to support embedded deployments of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). The “Red Hat Runtime” program targets developers looking for a well-supported Linux foundation on which to build commercial embedded systems and devices that are not particularly resource-constrained and which are based on mainstream architectures.

Previously, Red Hat offered an embedded-specific “Red Hat Embedded” distribution, including the “Embedded Linux Development Suite” (ELDS) tools, but the company ceased marketing its embedded product in April, 2002, because, according to VP of Partner Development Mike Evans, “We couldn't make a solid business case with that plan at that time.”

Following Red Hat's discontinuation of ELDS, CTO Michael Tiemann explained to LinuxDevices.com that rather than attempting to create an embedded-specific Linux distribution, the company's strategy was now “to expand the scope of Linux to encompass the embedded space.” Tiemann added, “The embedded world that [Red Hat is] most interested in needs a Linux platform that extends into the embedded space,” as opposed to a unique version of Linux tailored specifically to embedded devices.

At the same time, while Red Hat has pulled back from marketing an embedded product and services, it has recognized the continuum of operating system applicability — from servers to desktops to single-purpose clients to handhelds and other embedded devices — and has continued to support key clients in embedded markets such as telecom, according to James Prasad, head of Red Hat embedded, in a recent interview with LinuxDevices.com.

So, instead of creating and maintaining a product targeting the entire embedded market, Red Hat has now launched a new formal business model that it hopes will bring an existing product, RHEL, to those subsets of the embedded market where it can fit. “Frankly, we wonder if anybody can cover the whole market with a given technology,” Evans notes.

“There's a whole spectrum of embedded out there, from traditional RISC and Intel stuff, to network infrastructure, storage, etc.,” Evans continues. “Within that broad range of embedded, there's some percentage of people who want lower cost, higher performance, security updates, and the five to seven year lifecycle support of RHEL. And they want a company behind it that's viable.”

Red Hat's viability in embedded

LinuxDevices.com's reader surveys have long shown that embedded projects often start out with non-embedded specific distributions, because they offer the convenience of packaging, pre-testing, and upgrades at low or no cost. And, Red Hat Linux has consistently ranked first among all commercial Linux distributions — including embedded-specific distributions — as the basis for embedded developments.

However, Red Hat discontinued its free, supported “Red Hat Linux” product one year ago, at the same time launching the unsupported Fedora Linux project. This change has had an effect on embedded developers, according to Evans. “Often times experimentation is done with the free variants. In many cases, it gets to the point of, 'now I'm going to put this in my product, and commit to support it out in the market for five to seven years . . .,' and a senior businessperson gets involved, and they've got to make sure there's somebody behind this to provide security updates and support for five to seven years.”

Evans adds that before formally launching its RHEL Runtime program, Red Hat signed up a number of early adopters. “We wanted to validate that this is a viable model for the segment of the market we think it is. We wanted to avoid coming out with something and then saying it's not going to work. We've signed up eight or nine people — most have been using SCO, Windows, Soloris, or UNIX. Sizable companies have signed up.”

The Runtime program will be supported by Red Hat's standard support and engineering organization, according to Evans. And, he adds, the program could grow in time to support additional architectures. “We're wanting to cover more and more of this market as it makes business sense,” Evans said.

What about Wind River?

Red Hat partner Wind River announced in February that it would support a newly developed embedded Linux distribution — “Red Hat Embedded Linux” — alongside its proprietary VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS). Asked how the RHEL runtime program affected this partnership, Evans replied, “It's consistent with the Wind River partnership. There's two parts of the partnership. One, their Workbench IDE is now running on RHEL Workstation version, so embedded developers have a choice of Windows or RHEL. That's shipping now. Two, RHEL Runtime technology will be a target of Wind River development tools. So this announcement is incremental to the partnership, where this technology and business offering is being made available to some percentage of embedded market.”

Wind River shipped its Eclipse-based Workbench IDE in June, touting support for “any Linux,” in addition to VxWorks.

The Runtime program and pricing

The RHEL Runtime program comprises two levels, for deployments of greater and less than 500 units, respectively. Both programs stipulate that Red Hat is not obliged to provide end-user support. Instead, the company will provide development support, available in “24 x 7” and web and email versions. Pricing is based on minimum commitments to purchase either 100 or 500 copies of RHEL, with volume discounts available. At their option, customers are entitled to use the Red Hat brand for marketing purposes.

The program is available for platforms that include x86, amd64, EMT64 Itanium, and PPC (IBM I- and P-series systems, mainly, and mainframes) — the same set of architectures supported by RHEL.

Additional program details are available in a PDF download.

 
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