In what is being hailed as a coming-of-age event for Linux, Red Hat, a leader in enterprise Linux and an IBM partner, has joined Standard & Poor's flagship S&P 500 stock index. Founded in 1993, Red Hat is based in Raleigh, NC.

With over 65 offices spanning the globe, Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management and services oriented architecture (SOA) solutions. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide.

In February of this year, Red Hat and IBM marked the 10-year anniversary of their collaborative partnership which was formed to expand the use of enterprise solutions on Linux. In early 1999, Red Hat was on the eve of its IPO. Back then, only 10 million users ran the Linux operating system, according to IDC Research