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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