Posted by Raleigh, USA: Red Hat named Matt Hicks as President and CEO. Prior, Hicks was Red Hat’s EVP of Products and Technologies. While Paul Cormier, who served as President and CEO since 2020 will take a new role of Red Hat’s Chairman.
Matt Hicks joined Red Hat in 2006 as a developer on the IT team. He quickly rose via leadership positions across the organisation, helping Red Hat solidify itself as the open hybrid cloud technology leader.
Most notably, Hicks was a foundational member of the engineering team that developed Red Hat OpenShift which has grown into the backbone for hybrid cloud deployments across industries, now serving as the industry’s leading enterprise Kubernetes platform. He has remained at the vanguard of hybrid cloud computing and Red Hat’s product strategy since then.
As EVP of Products and Technologies, Hicks was responsible for the entirety of Red Hat’s product strategy and engineering.
Notably, under Hicks’ leadership, Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud strategy and portfolio have expanded to help customers build, deploy and manage any application, anywhere, from on-premises environment, to multiple clouds, and to the edge.
With over 25 years of experience in Linux, a background in computer engineering, industry vision and business acumen, Hicks is well-regarded for his work with customers and partners to solve the next generation of IT challenges with open source innovation.
“When I first joined Red Hat, I was passionate about open source and our mission, and I wanted to be a part of that. I am humbled and energized to be stepping into this role at this moment. There has never been a more exciting time to be in our industry and the opportunity in front of Red Hat is vast. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and prove that open source technology truly can unlock the world’s potential,” said Matt Hicks, President and CEO of Red Hat.
In 2020, Red Hat named Paul Cormier as President and CEO. He has been with Red Hat for over 21 years, during that span he has driven much of the company’s open hybrid cloud strategy, playing an instrumental role in the expansion of Red Hat’s portfolio to a full, modern IT stack based on open source innovation.
His efforts to transform Red Hat Linux from a freely downloadable operating system to a subscription model with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), was a pivotal moment. His leadership solidified Red Hat as an industry leader and paved the way for the open innovation that is at the heart of the hybrid cloud and modern IT.
As chairman, he will continue his efforts to help customers bring that vision to life. In his new role, Cormier will serve as Red Hat’s strategic touchstone and key advisor. His focus will continue to be on scaling the company and accelerating customer adoption of open source technology to build their open hybrid cloud architecture.
“As chairman, I’m excited to get to work with our customers, partners, and Matt in new ways,” said Paul Cormier, Chairman – Red Hat
Having led more than 26 acquisitions at Red Hat, Cormier will also work closely with Red Hat leadership on future M&A strategy. Since Red Hat’s acquisition by IBM in 2019, Cormier has been instrumental in scaling and accelerating Red Hat while maintaining the company’s market neutrality. He will continue to work alongside IBM chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna in this capacity. Both Cormier and Hicks will report to Krishna.