(LIC) chooses Red Hat Enterprise Linux to power its IT infrastructure

[nilesh vaghela]

April 6, 2006 Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) chooses Red Hat Enterprise Linux to power its IT infrastructure LIC to migrate all mission critical business applications to Red Hat Enterprise Linux Implementation to provide freedom and flexibility for LIC to focus on developing its core business applications Mumbai, April 5, 2006: Red Hat (NASDAQ: RHAT), the world's leading provider of open source to the enterprise, today, announced that Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), India's largest and one of the leading life insurance companies in the world, has chosen to implement Red Hat Enterprise Linux across its desktops and servers. LIC will now be able to completely migrate all its mission critical business applications to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, across all its locations in India and abroad. LIC will deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux across its 2,048 branches, 100 divisional offices, seven zonal offices, head office, subsidiary offices and overseas locations. The Linux deployment will provide LIC with a uniform, finely tuned operating system environment, along with security and integrity for its core application software. The implementation will also include utilisation of enterprise-layered solutions through Linux Servers for management, provisioning and monitoring of Red Hat Network. LIC develops all its software in-house, at its Software Development Centre (SDC) based in Mumbai. The migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux will allow LIC's IT department the freedom and flexibility to focus on development of its core business applications, leaving the management of the operating system to Red Hat. Mr. S. K. Kapahi, Executive Director - IT, Life Insurance Corporation of India said, "Red Hat aided LIC to migrate from a Unix to a Linux platform two years ago. Thanks to Red Hat's subscription policy and the benefits of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, LIC has saved substantially on costs." "Previously, the SDC was managing both the development and maintenance of applications along with maintenance of the operating system. Now, with business growing exponentially, SDC has to focus more on the development of newer business applications and providing flexibility to the existing ones. This resulted in difficulty in maintaining the operating system. With this implementation, our SDC can now focus on core business applications and leave the management of operating system infrastructure completely to Red Hat," said Mr. Kapahi. LIC will now be able to use the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux with a wide array of applications and certified hardware, thus enabling access to an end-to-end certified ecosystem on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This project is one of the most important migrations to Linux in India," said Javed Tapia, President, Red Hat Indian Subcontinent. "The LIC migration is a clear proof of the advantages of working on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform. LIC has always been a user of Linux and their step of moving from a customized platform to an industry-standard i.e. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, enables them to focus on developing core enterprise applications." "We are extremely proud to announce that Red Hat has successfully offered LIC a robust and completely supported platform, suitable for the most demanding enterprise environments," he added. For more information on Red Hat Enterprise Linux solutions please visit http://www.redhat.com About Red Hat Red Hat, the world's leading open source and Linux provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with satellite offices spanning the globe. The most trusted name in open source, CIOs and other senior-level IT executives have ranked Red Hat as the industry's most valued vendor for two consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value study. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high quality, low cost technology accessible. Red Hat provides operating system software along with middleware, applications and management solutions. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide and through top-tier partnerships. Red Hat's open source strategy offers customers a long term plan for building infrastructures that are based on and leverage open source technologies with focus on security and ease of management. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com Red Hat India is a subsidiary of Red Hat Inc, USA. Red Hat has been at the forefront of bringing the latest open source and Linux technology to India. Red Hat has enabled adoption of open source technology across segments - Government, enterprise and education. They have seven offices in India at Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai and Bhopal and one in Sri Lanka at Colombo. OEM partners include IBM, HCL Infosystems, Wipro Infotech and Acer among others. SI partners include Wipro Infotech and HCL Infosystems. Red Hat India has a distribution network of over 50 channel partners spanning 20 cities across India. Key distributors being GT Enterprises, Sonata Software and Integra Microsystems. Red Hat Learning Services are available with over 70 training partners at over 300 locations across India. Learn more: http://www.in.redhat.com About LIC LIC is the only public sector life insurance organization in India. It caters to the needs of over 17 crore policies through its 2048 Branch Offices spread all over the country in rural, mofussil and urban areas. All the Branches including Satellite Offices are networked. It provides facilities for anytime anywhere payment through its Enterprise Portals and through ECS, ATM, etc. Every year more than 2.5 crore policies are sold by it. The total life fund of the organization is 385639.07 crore. The organization is celebrating the Golden Jubilee year and has given special Golden Jubilee bonus for its policyholders this year. All software developments basically are done in-house by the I.T. team of the Corporation. It has also 1,14,588 number of employees on roll and more than 10 lakh agents. Forward-Looking Statements Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for the company, including statements containing the words - believes, anticipates, plans, expects, will, and similar expressions, constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: the factors discussed in our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC (a copy of which may be accessed through the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov), reliance upon strategic relationships, management of growth, the possibility of undetected software errors, the risks of economic downturns generally, and in Red Hat's industry specifically, the risks associated with competition and competitive pricing pressures and the viability of the Internet. In addition, the forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of the press release. *LINUX is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. RED HAT is a registered trademark of Red Hat, Inc.

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Anantika Channa
Marketing Manager
Red Hat India Pvt. Ltd

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Nilesh Vaghela