Swedish Armed Forces Pick Red Hat

RALEIGH, N.C. – The Swedish Armed Forces are giving Windows NT the boot and going with Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, that is.

On Tuesday, the Swedish military disclosed that it would install Raleigh-based Red Hat’s Linux solution across its infrastructure, replacing the Windows solution. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is already running on some 200 servers.

In a joint statement with Red Hat, the Swedish military said its decision was based in part on the “advanced security features” of the Red Hat operating system.
“There has been a demand for Linux within the Swedish Armed Forces for quite some time, which is why we’ve now decided to enter this deal,” said Jonna Lidman, a spokesperson for the Swedish military.

“The primary reasons for us choosing Red Hat Enterprise Linux were the product lifecycle as well as Red Hat’s position as the leading open source provider. What also affected the decision was the fact that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was fairly easy to migrate and is compatible with our in-house-developed programs," Lidman added.

Werner Knoblich, vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Red Hat, said the armed forces’ decision reflected a wider move by the Swedish government to embrace open source and Linux.

“At a time when there is a lot of hype around new proprietary operating system launches, the decision of the Swedish Army to migrate from Microsoft to open source is a major testament to the flexibility, control and security of open source software,” he said. “The selection of Red Hat by the Swedish Armed Forces follows a number of public sector Linux projects in Sweden, paving the way for wider adoption within the Swedish government.”