RedHat has taken a step that has caught many by surprise Appointing CEO and President Matt Hicksuntil now its product and technology manager, replacing Paul Cormier, which has held the reins of the company until now. Cormier, who has been with the company for more than 20 years and who had only been in the position for two years, since he was named CEO in 2020, will become Chairman of the Red Hat Board of Directors.
It’s been a few weeks now that there were rumors that Cormier was going to retire, but finally he has only changed his position to one with less stress and workload. Cormier is considered a pillar of the company’s founding, as in 2003, when he was the company’s Vice President of Engineering, he led Red Hat on its path to abandoning its first affordable distribution, Red Hat Linux, and launching its first full version for companies: RHEL, that is, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
This step was not very popular at Red Hat, and many engineers did not agree with adopting a new business model. After a stage of disagreements in which not a few left the company due to the changes, the company began to advance, until RHEL became the main Linux platform for companies on the market. It is used by more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies and entities and is forecast to have $12 trillion in revenue by 2022. IBM bought Red Hat in 2022, and Cormier has played a vital role in driving the growth of the company while maintaining its market neutrality with its new owner.
As for Hicks, he is quite popular in the company, and has a reputation as a process-involved leader. He joined Red Hat in 2006 as a developer on the team helping to port Perl applications to Java. It is not, therefore, the usual starting position in a company that leads to its top, and Hicks is aware of this. As he points out, he did not imagine that his career would lead to his current position.
Hicks, precisely, has pointed out that this is what he loves about Red Hat, in addition to highlighting that «It is something that differentiates it from other companies: nothing is predetermined, we are only limited by our passion and drive to contribute and make an impact.«. For all of this that he claims to have done, Hicks has risen rapidly. Above all, because of his work with Red Hat OpenShift, which he made the company, in addition to being a Linux powerhouse, also a company with weight in hybrid cloud technology.
Given what lies ahead, he has pointed out that «There has never been a more exciting time to be in our industry, and the opportunity Red Hat has ahead is immense. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and prove that open source technology can truly unlock the potential of the world.«.
As for Cornier, his new position will focus on «moving forward to help customers drive innovation with a hybrid cloud platform built on open source technology. Open source technology has won the innovation debates, and whatever the future is, it’s going to be built on open source technology, and Red Hat will be there.«. manager will work with IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna.
