The primary reason many companies choose redhat is their support. (Basically to cover the IT department’s butts if they happen to come up with some weird problem related to the OS)

Redhat stays on a VERY slow release cycle. They continue to support each version of the OS for years after release, some distros won’t support (make security patches available) updates beyond a year or so.

RH also doesn’t release “cutting edge” versions of most of the components, sticking with the “tried and true” versions of each component, leading to a little bit better stability than some other distros.

In reality, it all comes down to the ability to get GOOD, QUALITY support if needed. Centos is directly based on redhat enterprise edition, but doesn’t come with RH support. It’s not any less stable in any way, yet a company will pay the price to RH for any potential support they may need in the future.

That said, I don’t personally use RH on any of my servers, or any of my client’s servers. To me, that potential support doesn’t justify itself. RH isn’t a bad product in any way, it’s just not something I need.