Red Hat's Next Steps, According to Its New CEO

IBM saw its hybrid-cloud revenue jump 18% to $5.9 billion in the last three months, reports ZDNet - while also experiencing "its highest sales growth in a decade. "Much of that is due to its stand-alone Red Hat division."True, Red Hat sales increased by "only" 12%, which is low by Red Hat standards but darn good by any other standard. So what will Red Hat do now that it has a new CEO, Matt Hicks, and chairman, Paul Cormier? The answer: Stay the course. In an interview, Hicks, who's been with Red Hat since 2006, said, "[We'll keep using] the same core fundamentals that we built 20-plus years ago." Why? Because the combination of Linux, open-source software, and top support, "continues to play in new markets, whether that's the shift to cloud and cloud services or to edge computing. In the next couple of quarters. we'll just focus on executing. There's great momentum right now around the open hybrid cloud." It's not just the cloud, though. Hicks continued, "We have a lot of opportunities. We're also working with General Motors on Ultifi, GM's end-to-end software platform, and two days ago, we announced a partnership with ABB, one of the world's leading manufacturing automation companies. It's pretty cool to see Linux and open source technologies being pulled into these totally new markets in the industry. So my job is not to change anything but keep us executing and capturing the opportunities ahead...." Moving to the technical side, I asked about Red Hat and CentOS. Hicks replied, "I think it was a necessary shift and change. I'm a big believer in what makes open source work is the contribution cycle, and that wasn't happening with CentOS." Cormier adds that going forward Linux's biggest contribution to the world may be innovation (and not accessbility), "and that needs contributions. Without it driving open source and Linux, the cloud wouldn't be here."

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