I was amazed and delighted to see the news that Red Hat is going to start offering Red Hat Enterprise Linux on EC2. This is good news for several reasons:
- It shows that Red Hat, which has gotten a bit stodgy in its pursuit of the enterprise market, is not afraid to make a bold, game changing move. (Though its pricing is not as elastic as Amazon’s model allows.)
- It shows just how powerful the infrastructure is that Amazon is building. They completely get the idea of the web as platform, and they keep pushing the envelope. Kudos to them.
- It may create opportunities for people to move applications whole cloth to EC2, rather than just portions of the processing.
I haven’t had a chance to study the offering in detail, but on first look, my hat’s off to Red Hat and Amazon.