Red Hat has sailed into December with prestigious industry recognition for helping customers modernize and simplify their IT infrastructure. Even if they're not quite ready for the cloud today,  we provide the elements of a stable and flexible foundation with security features for when they are.  This week our commitment to customers at all stages of their cloud journey was recognized with two European IT awards.

According to a new IDC Infobrief sponsored by Red Hat* almost all organisations (93 percent) believe new enabling technologies ('agile IT') are required to be successful, recognition that 'agile IT' adoption truly is top of mind. We are therefore excited and extremely proud to see Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host awarded Product of the Year at the V3 Technology Awards in the UK. Launched in March 2015, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host is an operating system optimized for running the next generation of applications packaged as Linux containers.

The V3 awards focus on vendors and individuals who have innovated and achieved in the last year. Winners are chosen by the V3 readers. So winning an award signifies an endorsement from both the V3 editorial team in making the short-list; and, crucially, the V3 readership. This is an amazing win and we are grateful to the many of you who are already using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Atomic Host or simply appreciate the tremendous innovation behind it and took the time to vote.

As a leader in virtualization we know that existing applications and infrastructure aren’t going away. The same IDC survey saw that 83 percent of organisations expected to continue supporting existing applications & infrastructure for next three years.  With this in mind, we are pleased to say that Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization has been voted Product of the Year in the Virtualization software category by IT Professional in Poland, again voted for by end users. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization was described by the award organisers as "a comprehensive solution for server and desktop virtualization as well as for building highly scalable private cloud environments. Unlike other popular virtualization solutions on the market, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization offers a very simple subscription-based model."

Thank you again to everyone who voted, this is a fantastic way to end the year.

*Reference: An IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Red Hat June 2015. Lessons Learned from Early Adopters. DevOps, Open Source and Business Agility:

http://www.redhat.com/en/files/resources/rh-devops-info-brief-062015.pdf