IBM AND RED HAT ANNOUNCE ALLIANCE FOR ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS ON LINUX

The World's Largest Technology Company Forms Alliance with Market-leading Provider
of Linux Software and Expertise

February 18, 1999--Research Triangle Park, N.C.--Red Hat® Software, Inc. announced
today that it has entered an alliance with IBM to deliver, via IBM Business
Partners, high-performance IBM systems running Official Red Hat Linux.

IBM and Red Hat will work collaboratively to optimize IBM personal system hardware
for running Red Hat Linux, providing customers with powerful and reliable
enterprise and e-business solutions on the Red Hat Linux platform. Both companies
will work together to provide enterprise-level technical support and will conduct
joint marketing to enterprise customers. As a first demonstration of high
performing e-business solutions based on Red Hat Linux and IBM hardware, several
high traffic Red Hat web sites will be powered by the award winning Netfinity line
of servers.

Under the agreement, a development lab will be established to maximize performance,
reliability, and security for Red Hat Linux on IBM server and client systems,
including Netfinity servers, PC 300 Commercial Desktops, IntelliStations, and
ThinkPads. In addition to contributing developer expertise, Red Hat will also
perform hardware certification testing and provide dedicated customer training.

"IBM has long been a leader in powerful, reliable computing solutions," said Bob
Young, CEO, Red Hat Software. "This is an important milestone in the rapidly
growing acceptance of Linux."

More than 10 million users currently run the Linux operating system. According to
IDC Research, Linux was the fastest-growing server operating environment in 1998,
capturing more than 17 percent of all server operating system shipments. A new
survey in LinuxWorld showed that 74 percent of those polled cite Red Hat as the
most recognized Linux vendor.

"Our customers are asking for Linux solutions," said Bill McCracken, general
manager of marketing and strategy, IBM Personal Systems Group. "The Red Hat
alliance demonstrates IBM’s commitment to the open-source movement and to provide
our customers with an unmatched range of platforms, operating systems, solutions
and services."

"The Linux community has faced a number of real and imagined barriers to its
acceptance within the enterprise; IBM is helping Red Hat to break some of those
barriers down," said Bill Peterson, Research Manager at IDC. "One of  the barriers
to Linux in the enterprise is the availability of technical support.
IBM’s support organization is legendary within the industry and IDC believes that
with this announcement the technical support argument against Linux in the
enterprise becomes moot. Red Hat is already the leader in commercial Linux
shipments and through its numerous recently announced partnerships further
solidifies itself as one the top choices for enterprise Linux computing."

About Linux
Linux is the cooperatively developed POSIX-oriented, multi-user, multi-tasking
operating system used worldwide. Linux is strongly differentiated from virtually
all other operating systems because it is "open source" software, with the source code freely available to all users. Unlike
binary-only operating systems that restrict access to the source code, Linux
benefits from a worldwide community of highly experienced programmers and technically savvy academics who have the access to
enhance and improve the system. Linux is used as an exceptional-value, fully
functional UNIX workstation for Internet servers and other applications. Red Hat
Linux is maintained as "freely distributable" software available from many sites on
the Internet.

About Red Hat ® Software, Inc.
Founded in 1994, Red Hat Software is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., where
it builds and maintains the award-winning Red Hat Linux operating system. Working
in cooperation with a huge development team of research, academic, and commercial
software developers over the Internet, Red Hat’s goal is to build the most
accessible and advanced operating system available anywhere. Red Hat Linux for
Intel®, DEC Alpha(TM), and Sun SPARC® platforms continues to gain recognition in the
computer industry: From 1996 to the present, Red Hat Linux was named InfoWorld’s
Product of the Year, was given a Productivity accolade in Software Development’s
"Jolt" Awards, was named an Environment/Desktop finalist in the Ziff-Davis European
Excellence Awards, won the editor’s choice awards from both the Linux Journal and
Australian Personal Computing magazines, and won the "Just Plain Cool" award.

For more information about Red Hat Software and Red Hat products and technologies,
please call 1-888-REDHAT1 or visit our web site at http://www.redhat.com. Reviews
encouraged.

About IBM
IBM is the world’s largest technology company. For more information about IBM
please visit the company web site at http://www.ibm.com.

###

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red
Hat Software, Inc.  UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. INTEL is a
registered trademark of Intel Corporation. SPARC is a registered trademark of SPARC
International, Inc. Products bearing the SPARC trademarks are based on an
architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. ALPHA is a trademark of Digital
Equipment Corporation.
IBM and Red Hat Announce Alliance