Ximian to release enterprise level Red Carpet service

Inside the firewall

On Monday, October 7, Ximian is expected to announce Red Carpet Enterprise, the latest offering in the Red Carpet service family. Much the same as Red Carpet CorporateConnect, the difference is that systems administrators can put a Red Carpet server inside their firewall instead of having to rely on a less powerful and potentially less secure hosted service.

Ximian will have three levels of Red Carpet service now: Red Carpet is also similar to Red Hat Network, the Linux distribution company's centralized software management system.

Jeff Davis, senior systems programmer for Amerada Hess Corporation, has used both Ximian's and Red Hat's products, but is leaning toward adopting Red Carpet Enterprise on his server farm.

"We have a 300 system beowulf cluster that helps Hess in gas and oil exploration. We have about 14 Linux desktops, and we have an Apache web server and file server," says Davis.

"I've been using CorporateConnect, and it allows me to create channels on their Web site to distribute patches and updates. I can create custom channels by setting up test systems using fixes that I know will work."

"I can schedule when things will occur. I have machines in Houston and London -- we're concerned about making sure we get the security patches in a timely manner.

"The new product, Enterprise, will let me create my own server. One of the downfalls of [CorporateConnect] was that it was all Web based. On the new product, I can log on and run things from a command line and do it a lot faster.

"I'm going to have channels that will accept everything Ximian offers. Then I can take those and copy them however I want into my own customized channels.

"You have to kind of be careful because you don't want everything just getting installed."

The Red Carpet server starts at $2,500, with a software license starting at $200 for each managed system, with organizational volume pricing available. Customers may optionally subscribe to the Red Carpet library subscription service, which provides updates to the latest software from Ximian, leading Linux distributions, and third-party vendors.

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