Welcoming Larry Stack to Red Hat

We are excited to announce that Larry Stack has joined Red Hat as senior vice president, Global Accounts and Target Industries. Larry has had a multi-faceted and very accomplished career and is well versed in leading industry and global account focused organizations. His most recent role was as chief sales officer for DXC Technology, the combination of CSC and HP Services. Prior to DXC, Larry served as senior vice president and chief sales officer for Enterprise Services at HPE.

In his role at Red Hat, Larry will be responsible for leading the development of an industry-focused sales approach. He will also be responsible for strategic and program leadership for our Global Accounts team. Larry will work with companies undergoing digital transformations to provide industry-specific solutions and services to better enable their software infrastructure.

We sat down with Larry to learn more about him and what led him to Red Hat:

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. How did you get started in the tech industry?

I started my career in the United States Air Force right after high school. Later, I moved on to the White House as the situation room communication officer keeping the President, George H.W. Bush at the time, informed about key world events that may affect United States interests and policies. It was in this role that I really got to learn and understand key components of technology and its capabilities. I then served with the United Nations, Peace Keeping Operations as a field service officer in Bosnia and Angola responsible for the execution of peace treaties amongst warring factions, including the oversight of humanitarian relief operations.

I wanted to continue my journey on the IT side so I became a consultant at Fujitsu and then on to Electronic Data Systems (EDS). From there I went to Accenture where I was leading their global efforts in Health Care and Public Services. I then served as vice president and chief sales officer for Enterprise Services at HPE. Most recently I was chief sales officer and chief revenue officer at DXC Technology.

What drew you to Red Hat?

There were three primary things that drew me to Red Hat - the first being the culture. The culture at Red Hat is based on the idea of open. There are two different ideologies in the technology industry - one is closed IP and the other is sharing - taking the strengths of everyone’s ideas and offering it to our clients. It was this open ideology and open culture that ultimately drew me to Red Hat.

The second is because I believe that Red Hat is constantly innovating and driving new ideas into the market and shaping the technology market for future generations - something I wanted to be involved with.

Lastly, I was drawn to Red Hat because of the overall capabilities I believe the company has. I truly believe Red Hat is capable of becoming one of our industry’s defining companies and I want to be a part of that journey.

What are you most looking forward to in your new role?

I’m really looking forward to working directly with our teams and our customers. Many of our customers are currently undergoing major transformations and shifts in how they operate. I’m looking forward to working with our customers to understand what they are hoping to accomplish during the next step of their digital journey and how Red Hat can help them and enable these goals.

As you mentioned, you'll be working with industries that are undergoing digital transformations - what do you think is important for them to keep in mind as they modernize their technologies?

The biggest thing companies need to understand is that it takes an ecosystem of partners to execute solutions of this magnitude, and not one company alone can do it all. What Red Hat has done is specialize in key products that align and can be delivered in a way that works best for your specific business. That, coupled with our ecosystem of partners, innovators, and ISVs can drive industry solutions and line our customers up for long-term success as well as solve short-term needs.

Any final thoughts?

I believe we are seeing massive disruption and a tectonic shift in the overall IT landscape right now. There have been disruptive waves before - in the 90s and again in the early 2000s - but I believe right now is the greatest disruptive wave, digitalization. With that wave, I believe the future belongs to the fast, to the innovative and to the open. And I believe Red Hat has those characteristics as well as the culture and capabilities to be a leader in IT now and for many years to come.