Red Hat will design a new lightweight version of its operating system that will form the foundation of a future upgrade of Intel's vPro managment platform.

The software will operate as a virtualisation hypervisor that provides a place for software appliances as well as the user's operating system.

Red Hat hasn't yet decided which virtualisation technology it will use, but chief technology officer Brian Stevens told vnunet.com that it will "probably" use Xen. The hypervisor will run invisibly to the end user.

VPro is Intel's professional desktop platform brand. It allows management software to run in a virtual compartment, providing access to a system when it has become unresponsive.

Symantec, for instance, currently ships a product that audits a system's patch level and isolates insecure systems.

VPro uses a proprietary hypervisor technology that limits systems to a single appliance. The Red Hat technology will provide a fully open alternative that supports multiple appliances.

Intel and Red Hat will also create a software development kit that allows management software vendors to create a lightweight operating system tailored to their application.

"I can see the day when Linux and open source software are going to be used to make Windows manageable and secure," Stevens said in a keynote at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego.

Intel and Red Hat plan to release a beta later this year. The final software is slated for release in 2008.

The first Intel vPro systems started shipping last year. An upgrade is scheduled for release later this year will introduce support for Trusted Execution Technology that verifies application integrity before code is executed.

It also introduces support for the web services management standard, which provides a framework for system management commands.