Tradesignals Builds Its Business On Red Hat Linux; Tradesignals Migrates to Red Hat Linux Platform to Grow Business and Meet Customer Demands

Business Wire, May 21, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 21, 2002

Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT), the world's premier open source and Linux provider, today announced that Tradesignals, a leading managed service provider of quantitative analytics products to the futures industry, has selected Red Hat Linux as the operating system for its core business infrastructure. Tradesignals' customers worldwide rely on the delivery of financial data and analysis in real-time, making it imperative that the company's IT systems are highly reliable, stable and secure. The latest phase of the Tradesignals network development program has brought 80% of the business infrastructure onto a Red Hat Linux platform, including the majority of the mission-critical IT systems and supporting databases.

Tradesignals thoroughly evaluated the Linux platform alongside Sun Solaris and Microsoft to compare scalability, performance, support services and total cost of ownership for the alternative systems. Central to Tradesignals' requirements is an IT infrastructure that is easily extendable to meet the growing demands of the business and capable of supporting the company's 99.9% SLA for delivery of information to customers and partners. Tradesignals was able to deploy a robust solution based on Red Hat Linux to meet these requirements, running mainly on the company's existing hardware, for between a third and a quarter of the cost of proprietary alternatives, which is consistent with research recently published by IDC.

"In the financial services sector decisions always have to be based on the most accurate and up-to-date information available," said Stephen Egan, director of Tradesignals. "We set stringent SLAs to meet these demands but, as a result, put a lot of pressure on our IT systems. Whereas we found some systems came up to scratch on reliability or scalability, only Linux could comfortably meet all of our demands and beat its competitors hands down on cost. At Tradesignals we're highly averse to technical risk because if any part of our IT infrastructure falls down then our service is invalid. As far as we are concerned, it doesn't get much more mission critical than that and we're confident that Red Hat Linux will deliver."

"Linux is beginning to make real impact in the financial services sector, especially where companies are scrutinizing cost savings and security issues," said James Prasad, VP, Red Hat. "The similarities between the Unix and Linux operating systems, and the skills required to manage them, make it easy for companies to migrate to Linux, and Red Hat is working with several companies in this industry to assist the move. Tradesignals has proven that Linux provides a truly scalable, secure and cost effective solution, and Red Hat is pleased to continue to work with the company to build a network that will support its continued growth."

About Tradesignals

Trade Signal Corporation Ltd (TSC), founded in 1997, is a financial services company authorised in Ireland by the Central Bank under section 10 of the Investment Intermediaries Act (1995), and in the US by the Commodities Futures Trading Commision. The company provides complete end-to-end managed solutions, including quantitiative financial analysis, proprietary Java charting and quote tools, as well as real-time online derivatives trading, hedging, and risk management solutions. The Company's products are licensed by over 80 U.S. futures brokers, some of the world's largest derivatives exchanges, as well as leading global corporations in the Energy, Agriculture and Financial sectors.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat is the world's premier open source and Linux provider. Red Hat is headquartered in Raleigh, N.C. and has offices worldwide. Its European headquarters is based in Surrey, UK, with offices throughout Europe. Please visit Red Hat on the Web at www.europe.redhat.com. For investor enquiries, contact Gabriel Szulik at Red Hat, (919)-754-3700.

LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc. All other names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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