Taking the next step in Red Hat’s journey

Editor’s note: Today, we announced that Matt Hicks will assume the role of president and chief executive officer of Red Hat, succeeding Paul Cormier who will serve as chairman of Red Hat, Inc. Paul shared the following email with Red Hatters. 

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Hi all, 

In a few moments, we will publicly share an update about Red Hat’s leadership team externally. Before we do, I wanted to share it with you. 

After 21 years with Red Hat, I have decided to make the move fully into the role of Chairman. I will spend my time working with Red Hat’s senior management team on activities focused on portfolio growth and leadership development and with our strategic customers and partners to more effectively marry our strategy with theirs. I also look forward to continuing to work with the entire team on our M&A strategy. 

I’m excited about spending more time looking at our future. As the industry open source leader, our customers need us to continue to lead in hybrid cloud computing. Our customers need us to keep fostering innovation in open source technology and delivering that in products and services that enable them to bring to life a true open hybrid cloud architecture.

Today is also an exciting day for Red Hat as we announce Matt Hicks as Red Hat’s new president and chief executive officer (CEO). Matt is absolutely the right person to lead Red Hat. In more than 15 years here, he has built an incredible depth of understanding of Red Hat’s business from roles in IT, Consulting, and Products and Technologies. Matt was a founding member of the OpenShift team and has stayed deeply connected with our product strategy ever since. He is a true Red Hatter–he knows who we are, where we’ve come from, lives our culture, and is one of the most passionate people I have had the privilege of working with. Matt has the vision and the drive to help us seize the incredible opportunity ahead of Red Hat. 

Matt and I have worked closely for years, but since I became CEO in 2020, we have spent a lot of time thinking about Red Hat’s future and, frankly, planning for this moment. I have complete faith that his combination of leadership skills, deep understanding of our product strategy and technology, and unique perspective will take us to places we can’t even imagine yet. 

Open source development has won. Hybrid cloud is the approach customers want and need. Edge computing does not exist without the hybrid cloud and will be built on an open source foundation. Red Hat is the open hybrid cloud technology leader. We’ve put ourselves in an amazing place. But this is not the moment to take a victory lap, because we are not done yet. We need to keep pushing to maintain our position and continue to scale.

Lastly, I just want to say, thank you for everything all of you do every day to make Red Hat what it is. I have been able to wake up every day for the last 21 years and think how lucky I am to work alongside all the Red Hatters around the world who have truly changed the world with open source innovation. The best is yet to come.

/p