Red Hat announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is now available in the AWS GovCloud region of Amazon Web Services (AWS).  As you may recall, AWS GovCloud enables U.S. government agencies and customers to move sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements.

This latest move makes sense, considering that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is widely deployed in U.S. government agencies.  Also, this flavor of Linux has completed fifteen Common Criteria certifications across four hardware platforms.

What’s more interesting is the fact that AWS, in hosting Red Hat, is working with a direct competitor in some regards.  However, the two are the least likely to bump heads in the government marketplace, when compared to other OS providers such as Microsoft.

The US government is quickly moving to cloud-based platforms, and AWS is at the top of their list as the IaaS of choice.  Red Hat understands that they need a strong partner such as AWS to get a seat at the table.  This seems to be the right play.