Longtime Red Hat executive and open hybrid cloud visionary steps into leadership role succeeding Jim Whitehurst
Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, recently announced that it has named Paul Cormier as president and chief executive officer of Red Hat. Cormier, who previously served as Red Hat’s President, Products and Technologies, succeeds Jim Whitehurst, who is now President, IBM.
Since joining Red Hat in 2001, Cormier’s leadership and vision have driven major strategy shifts and expansion of the company’s portfolio of products and services.
Cormier is credited with pioneering the subscription model that transformed Red Hat from an open source disruptor to an enterprise technology mainstay, moving Red Hat Linux from a freely downloadable operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the industry’s leading enterprise Linux platform that today powers more than 90% of Fortune 500 organizations.
During his tenure at Red Hat, Whitehurst oversaw Red Hat’s expansion and increasing influence across the technology industry including growing revenue from more than $500 million to almost $3 billion for the company’s 2018 fiscal year, as well as the landmark acquisition of Red Hat by IBM for $34 billion in 2019.
“The opportunity for Red Hat has never been bigger than it is today and I am honored to lead the company to help our customers solve their challenges and to keep Red Hat at the forefront of innovation,” affirmed Cormier.
“Paul will enable Red Hat not only to keep pace with the demands of enterprise IT, but also lead the way as emerging technologies break into the mainstream,” asserted Jim Whitehurst, President, IBM.
