IBM family is in for a lot of major changes, as Ginni Rometty is expected to step down from the position of CEO. Her position is to be filled by Arvind Krishna, while the current CEO of Red Hat will assume the role of President. However, that leaves a position empty at the board meetings of Red Hat, which had been unfilled as of yet. Not now. Red Hat has announced that this role will be taken over by Paul Cormier, former VP of engineering at the company.
Paul has been a part of the company since 2001 and has witnessed its growth-from a small startup to a multi billion dollar enterprise. Red Hat, which according to its website is a “multinational software company providing open source software products to the enterprise community,” has been striving to “convince the world that open source was real, safe and enterprise-grade,” according to Paul.
In a letter to the company’ employees, Paul wrote,”Looking back to when I joined, we were in a different position and facing different issues, but the spirit was the same,” reminiscing his journey at the company. “We were on a mission to convince the world that open source was real, safe and enterprise-grade,” he said, indicating that the company has managed to achieve some of what it started out to do. He also said that “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,” according to the blog post at Red Hat.
Jim Whitehurst said,”Having been the driving force behind Red Hat’s product strategy for nearly two decades, he(Paul) has been intimately involved in setting the company’s direction and uniquely understands how to help customers and partners make the most out of their cloud strategy.” During his tenure as the CEO, Jim saw the company grow exponentially, as it expanded from $500 million in revenue to almost $3 billion in 2018’s fiscal year.
Red Hat, which is a part of IBM group, was acquired back in 2018 for a staggering $34 billion. And while it is a subsidiary of the larger entity, it operated individualistically with a dedicated executive structure.
Arvind Krishna will assume the role of CEO after Ginni Rometty’s departure. Krishna served as the head of the company’s cloud business, a position that will now be filled by Howard Boville, Bank of America’s former top technology executive. As the CTO of Bank Of America, Howard was responsible for building running the second largest U.S. bank’s cloud services, according to Reuters.
