Red Hat, Inc. and IBM have announced that they have joined hands to expand the open source KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) ecosystem through joint solutions targeting the enterprise. They plan on pooling their resources together to develop cloud management interfaces and virtualization management APIs that will address cloud, datacenter automation, virtual storage and networking, virtualization security and virtual appliance management. They also intend to cultivate a community of users among third-party virtualization vendors. The APIs will be used in their respective management products, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager, IBM Director and Tivoli software.

The Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is built on KVM and is touted as a less expensive open source alternative to proprietary virtualization products like VMware's vSphere. It allows for businesses to create multiple virtual versions of Linux and Windows environments on the same server. Last year IBM gave its stamp of approval to KVM when it chose the KVM technology for its cloud test and development service. Now the combination of IBM hardware and software with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is officially in use by Brazilian Federal Highway Police (DPRF) and Cortal Consors, a division of BNP Paribas.