Matt Hicks appointed Red Hat president and CEO

Red Hat has appointed Matt Hicks as its president and CEO, Hicks was previously executive VP of products and technologies.

Hicks succeeds Paul Cormier, who will now serve as chairman of Red Hat.

He joined the company in 2006 as a developer on the IT team. He quickly rose to leadership positions across the organisation, helping Red Hat solidify itself as the open hybrid cloud technology leader.

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.

Matt Hicks, president and CEO, Red Hat said, “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 energised 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.”

Paul Cormier, who was named president and CEO in 2020, has a 21-year tenure at Red Hat and during that time 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.

Cormier, chairman, at Red Hat said, “Hicks is the exemplification of a true Red Hatter and is absolutely the right person to step into this role. His experience across different parts of our business has given him depth and breadth of knowledge about how we can best work together to scale and remain the open hybrid cloud leader. He understands our product strategy and the direction the industry is moving in a way that’s second to none.

“As chairman, I’m excited to get to work with our customers, partners, and Hicks in new ways. My focus moving forward will be on helping customers drive innovation forward with a hybrid cloud platform built on open source technology. Open source technology has won the innovation debates and whatever the future looks like, it’s going to be built on open source technology and Red Hat will be there.”

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. Having led more than 26 acquisitions at Red Hat, Cormier will also work closely with Red Hat leadership on future M&A strategies.

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.