Red Hat purchase of Qumranet hits Microsoft where it hurts

Red Hat has purchased Qumranet for about $107 million in cash and is grinning silly that it has snagged some desktop virtualization technology to avoid partnering up with Microsoft. Qumranet makes SolidICE, a product which will allow Red Hat to deliver software to a PC (even a Windows PC) from the data center. The Qumranet team created its own open source virtualization technology, Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM). Red Hat insists that the buyout doesn't mean that it is abandoning Xen, promising support at least through 2014, the UK Register reports. But clearly, Xen has become too closely associated with Camp Microsoft for the tastes of the Linux-lover-eqauls-Windows-hater camp. Novell uses Xen as does Microsoft partner Citrix.

While the buyout is interesting, the two companies had already been closely collaborating. Over the summer, Red Hat unveiled a beta for a KVM-based hypervisor called oVirt that can fit onto a 64MB flash drive and boot on virtually any piece of x86 hardware.

Microsoft isn't sitting still, of course. Network World reports that Microsoft this week also expanded its virtualized desktop, adding new features to its App-V technology and improving licensing options for users and service providers. Meanwhile, HP announced its HP Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) with Citrix Systems' XenDesktop. And Microsoft announced its long-expected partnership with Citrix which centers on a version of Citrix XenDesktop that will integrate with Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager when that management software ships later this month.

Also see Red Hat buys desktop-virtualization vendor Qumranet
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