Red Hat appointed Paul Cormier as President and CEO

Red Hat has appointed Paul Cormier President as president and chief executive officer of the company. Cormier served as Red Hat’s president of Products and Technologies for a long time. Now, he steps into leadership role succeeding Jim Whitehurst who is now president of IBM.

Nineteen years in Red Hat

Paul Cormier has been working at Red Hat since 2001. For the last 19 years, he has driven major strategy shifts and expansion of the company’s portfolio of products and services. Cormier moved Red Hat Linux from a freely downloadable operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

In addition to this, Cormier has driven more than 25 acquisitions at Red Hat. With the help of Cormier vision, Red Hat OpenShift, one of the important Kubernetes platforms, has been established. He has also forged industry-changing partnerships. For instance, Red Hat partnered with Microsoft to bring a broader choice to hybrid cloud deployments. He has been instrumental in Red Hat’s structural combination with IBM.

Paul Cormier President and CEO, Red Hat, talked about his new role, saying,

“When I joined Red Hat, it would have been impossible to predict how Linux and open source would change our world, but they are truly everywhere. The transformations I see happening in our industry are exciting, as they present new challenges and opportunities. 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.”

Jim Whitehurst oversaw Red Hat’s expansion and increasing influence across the technology, IBM acquired Red Hat for $34 billion in 2019. After this leadership, the company has named to Forbes’ list of “The World’s Most Innovative Companies” six times and named to Fortune’s list of the “Most Admired Companies” in 2019 and 2020. Jim Whitehurst becomes Chairman of Red Hat, in addition to his new role as president of IBM

Jim Whitehurst, president, IBM, said:

“After working with him closely for more than a decade, I can confidently say that Paul was the natural choice to lead Red Hat. Having been the driving force behind Red Hat’s product strategy for nearly two decades, he’s 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.

He is a proven leader and his commitment to open source principles and ways of working 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. It was my honor and privilege to lead a company filled with many of our industry’s best and brightest and I am excited to see what Red Hatters accomplish under Paul’s leadership.”