Piper Jaffray Reiterates Overweight Rating on Red Hat (RHT)

Piper Jaffray is out with a research note this morning, where it reiterates its Overweight rating on Red Hat Inc.

; it also has a $37.00 price target on the stock. The Piper Jaffray analysts said, “We recently interviewed 45 Red Hat partners to assess opinions of RHEV and found that 80% believe RHEV already delivers a TCO that is superior to, or equal with, VMware

. Customers appear ready for an open, viable alternative to VMware, as contacts indicate several large VMware customers are taking a very close look at RHEV. Our prior work showed that RHEV can drive 10% of RHT's bookings in the next 12-24 months, and the current results provide reason for incremental optimism.” They noted, “Several noteworthy comments from key Red Hat partners and resellers stand out, including the following: 1) ‘I think that adoption of RHEV will be faster than typically seen in the x86 industry, beginning with the loyal Red Hat install base and spreading quickly to other Linux clients and finally to the general virtualization population. I think that in general customers are ready for an open, viable alternative to VMware.’ 2) ‘I'm a VMware solutions integrator and currently deploy their solution exclusively for desktop and server virtualization. I'm excited about the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization product line and it seems Red Hat is better positioned than Oracle/Microsoft/Citrix to take on some of the Enterprise Virtualization market share (whereas the other products I've mentioned have been limited to niche markets).’ 3) "I think RHEV is an interesting product compared to VMware because of cost and ease of subscription understanding. This is completely different than VMware and I think customers appreciate simplicity." The bottom line is, we believe Red Hat has quickly joined the ranks of a select group of software providers with a legitimate seat at the virtualization table.’” Learn how to find the best

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