Singapore’s First Local Search and Directory Engine Selects Red Hat Solutions for Reliability, Security and Ability to Scale with Business Growth

Business Wire, April 01, 2009

Rednano.sg utilizes Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform and Red Hat Network Satellite to Drive Business Growth

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Red Hat (NYSE:RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that rednano.sg, Singapore's first local search and directory engine, has developed a stable, secure and reliable platform for its online search engine business using a combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, including built-in virtualization, Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Global File System (GFS), as well as Red Hat Network (RHN) Satellite.

A joint venture of Singapore Press Holdings Group (SPH) and Schibsted Group, SPH Search produces rednano.sg, which it aims to be the premier local online search and directory engine for users looking for information about Singapore, its people and its businesses.

Immediately identified as critical to the operational readiness of rednano.sg was the choice of a technology platform, in particular the choice of operating system, to run on the organization’s Intel-based servers. Clustering was another important requirement for the organization, due to the traffic and peak demands a search engine business garners, demanding the IT organization to load balance among multiple machines.

“Rednano.sg, Singapore’s first local search and directory engine requires a reliable and scalable infrastructure. The systems software vendor must be able to provide good, local technical support,” said Christopher Yeo, chief technology officer at SPH Search. "We considered various open source options, and after a careful selection process, we decided on Red Hat Enterprise Linux."

“Red Hat is well-established in Asia, giving us the necessary confidence that we can get reliable support when needed,” said Yeo. “Through its business model, open source vision and talent acquisitions, Red Hat has proven that it has a clear strategy.”

SPH Search implemented several Red Hat solutions as part of its rednano.sg deployment, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Platform, both 32-bit and 64-bit, which includes Red Hat Cluster Suite and Red Hat Global File System as part of the platform at no additional cost. Additionally, SPH Search uses Red Hat Network Satellite for reliable systems management. Its open source-based platform also includes Java, Apache, MySQL, Postgres, Oracle and Tomcat. The solutions run on more than 140 servers, including Intel Xeon processors, HP ProLiant DL360, BL460c and BL480c servers.

“We are very pleased with the entire implementation process. Red Hat was able to do the things that we required for our hardware and infrastructure. The easy-to-use graphical user interface facilitates easy installation and configuration,” said Yeo.

“Red Hat is a good fit and it delivers great technical support around the clock – which is an important factor in our business. Red Hat also provides constant software updates and patches through the Red Hat Network Satellite that come with detailed information to ensure that our solutions are always tweaked for maximum performance and security. What’s best is that it’s easy for us to find and contact Red Hat-certified system engineers and Red Hat's presence in Singapore provides local support,” he said.

“Our network and infrastructure must be designed and implemented correctly right from the start, and the Red Hat-Intel combination gives us the necessary power, performance, scalability and security needed by our search engine,” said Yeo.

“Open source is very reliable, with a lot of community and enterprise support. In Singapore and across the region, we can find many good technical engineers and developers,” said Yeo. “We are continuously working on deploying new search services to serve our users and continuously optimizing and pushing the limits of our infrastructure and solutions to power ever more new services.”

To read the full rednano.sg case study, visit www.customers.press.redhat.com.

For more news about Red Hat, visit www.redhat.com. For more news, more often, visit www.press.redhat.com.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading open source solutions provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 65 offices spanning the globe. CIOs ranked Red Hat as one of the top vendors delivering value in Enterprise Software for five consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.