IBM subsidiary Red Hat has named a new president and chief executive, effective immediately: it is Matt Hicks, the company’s executive vice president of products and technologies.
Red Hat's current chief executive Paul Cormier who is also the president of the open source software tools provider, will continue on as the company's chairman, according to a company statement.
Cormier will work on scaling the company, customer adoption and mergers and acquisitions, perhaps an indication that a purchase is on the horizon for Red Hat.
Both will report to IBM chief executive Arvind Krishna.
New chief executive started as a developer.
Hicks joined Red Hat in 2006 as a developer on the IT team.
He was a key member of the engineering team behind Kubernetes platform Red Hat OpenShift and helped to expand the portfolio to handle multiple clouds, the edge and other environments.
He also helped spearhead new managed cloud solutions, artificial intelligence capabilities and cloud-native applications, among other Red Hat offerings.
Hicks was also front and centre during the recent Red Hat Summit event, delivering part of the keynote address.
“Red Hat serves as the foundation of so many clients’ technology strategies because of its open source and hybrid cloud capabilities,” Krishna said.
“Matt’s deep experience and technical knowledge of Red Hat’s entire portfolio makes him the ideal leader as Red Hat continues to grow and to develop innovative, industry leading software,” he added.
Red Hat veteran hands the fedora to Hicks
Cormier has worked at Red Hat for more than 20 years.
He became Red Hat chief executive and president in 2020 when his predecessor, Jim Whitehurst, was bumped up to the IBM president role.
Whitehurst then surprised the channel last year by stepping down as IBM president and becoming a senior adviser to Krishna and the IBM executive team.
IBM bought Red Hat in 2019.
Cormier said that Hicks “is absolutely the right person to step into this role.”
“His experience across different parts of our business has given him depth and breadth of knowledge about how we can best work together to scale and remain the open hybrid cloud leader,” Cormier said.
“He understands our product strategy and the direction the industry is moving in a way that’s second to none.
As chairman, I’m excited to get to work with our customers, partners, and Matt in new ways,” Cormier added.
