IBM’s open-source software company Red Hat has named Paul Cormier as its president and CEO. Cormier, previously Red Hat’s president of products and technologies, replaces Jim Whitehurst, who is now president of IBM.
IBM has made a huge bet on Red Hat, hoping to dominate a potentially trillion-dollar market by scooping up the open-source giant for $34 billion last year.
Cormier joined Red Hat in 2001, and according to the company is responsible for driving the move to a subscription model and shifting Red Hat Linux from offering a freely downloadable operating system to focus on selling an enterprise version to big business. The company said its Red Hat Enterprise Linux is now used by 90% of Fortune 500 organizations.
[Source: TFiR]
