Red Hat, Inc., a leading provider of open source to the enterprise, announced that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Lab CIOs made an agreement for broad deployment of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for systems in the DOE National Laboratories and Technology Centers to attain the highest levels of price performance, reliability and maintainability. In order to achieve the science and technology goals, sustainable consistency in the computing enterprise is essential for the DOE National Laboratories and Technology Centers. Guaranteed support for seven years, the commitment to open source assurance, and proven price performance benchmarks were key factors in the decision-making process for standardization on Red Hat. Additionally, Red Hat Network and Satellite Server provide new levels of systems management capability resulting in improved overall security, policy enforcement and quality control. "Over the past decade open source software, especially Linux, has helped revolutionize high performance cluster computing and we expect it to continue to help us push the price performance envelope," said Roy Whitney, CIO, Jefferson Lab and Secretary of the DOE Lab Directors' System of Labs Computing Coordinating Committee. "Equally important, DOE lab systems require a secure, highly reliable and high performance environment that runs on systems ranging from the desktop to the high-end clusters." "The standards-based approach and manageability will allow the DOE labs to widely deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Network in our computing infrastructure to meet these requirements," said Becky Verastegui, CIO, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Chair of the DOE Lab Directors' System of Labs Computing Coordinating Committee."In addition, this agreement allows licensing in support of goals for quality and efficiency." "Open source is a logical fit for government due to the incredible attention paid to standards," said Paul Smith, Vice President of Government Sales Operations at Red Hat. "Red Hat Enterprise Linux is being consistently chosen as a viable alternative by government agencies due to the security and supportability the platform delivers."