Looking beyond their positions in their respective markets, both Red Hat and T-Mobile share a number of similarities.

In a recent interview with Ars Technica, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst admitted that VMware virtualization is ahead of his company’s offering – which isn’t much of a shocker. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 does some nifty stuff, but it still lags behind vSphere 5 in a number of areas, including storage live migration and the amount of RAM you can assign to VMs.

The same argument can be made for T-Mobile: It’s playing catch-up with the competition. For starters, T-Mobile hasn’t deployed a true 4G network. Unlike AT&T and Verizon, which are rolling out nationwide LTE networks, or Sprint, which uses WiMAX, T-Mobile uses HSPA+ to deliver faster wireless speeds, but that technology is still considered 3G. (For all the nerds out there, I understand that LTE isn’t theoretically 4G. But that’s a discussion for a different day.) Also, T-Mobile’s selection of handsets leaves much to be desired. For goodness’ sake, it’s the only U.S. carrier that doesn’t offer the iPhone!

But the Red Hat and T-Mobile comparisons extend beyond both companies’ shortcomings. They provide a cost-effective and viable alternative to their competition. For example, a RHEV subscription nets you enterprise-grade features, such as high availability and distributed resource scheduling, for a fraction of VMware’s price. For organizations that are just beginning to virtualize or looking to add a second hypervisor, it’s hard to ignore the allure of a cheap and stable virtualization platform. (Although, I wonder if those IT shops would prefer Hyper-V, which comes with Windows Server.)

T-Mobile, for its part, offers dirt-cheap voice and data plans. When I look at its Classic Unlimited Plus plan, I’m ashamed of my monthly AT&T iPhone bill. T-Mobile makes sense for people who don’t want to fork over $100 a month for a smartphone. Ultimately, it’s great for customers and the wireless market, as a whole.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seem to agree. They recently opposed a $39 billion merger between AT&T and T-Mobile for antitrust reasons. The FCC even said that T-Mobile was a “disruptive force” that keeps wireless carriers from raising pricing.

I won’t go as far as calling Red Hat a disruptive force in the virtualization market. But the capitalist in me believes that competition is good for buyers and sellers. And T-Mobile and Red Hat promote greater competition and apply pressure on their respective market leaders.