RALEIGH – Paul Cormier never wanted to be a suit in the corporate suite, but now that he is the chief executive officer of Red Hat his attitude is different. He’s ready to lead, determined to make the Raleigh-based software firm an integral part of new corporate parent IBM.
But he’s not replacing Red Hat’s red with IBM’s big blue. There’s his 20-year legacy he has built as a Hatter [he joined the company as vice president of engineering in 2001] — the free-spirit culture, devotion to the world of open source – not proprietary software – and a belief in the Linux operating system as the kernel of innovation for all things tech.
Oh, and forget a suit. That’s never been Red Hat culture, from the days when co-founders Bob Young and Mark Ewing were selling software out of their homes in 1993.
“Honestly I didn’t particularly aspire to any management or leadership role, it just sort of happened,” Cormier tells WRAL TechWire in an exclusive interview. “I’m the type of person who will take charge when I see something that needs to be done, and because of that I naturally fell into leadership roles.”
From left, Red Hat’s Jackie Nahins, Kelly Duke and Kristin Gallagher celebrate the Hatters’ new logo inside the Red Hat HQ last year. (WRAL TechWire photo)
What needs to be done now is to keep driving growth at Red Hat which in turn will help IBM recover the $34 billion paid to acquire the Raleigh company in 2019. The company has been profitable. It counts more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies as customers and operates around the world with more than 100 offices. In its most recently quartertly earnings report, IBM acknowledged Red Hat’s growth has continued as part of Big Blue.
A graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, Cormier has held a wide variety of roles across his technology career before joining Red Hat. After 12 years as executive vice president of engineering and president of products and technologies, he landed the CEO chair.
Cormier became CEO of Red Hat a month ago as his predecessor, Jim Whitehurst, moved on to become president of IBM. Cormier now reports directly to Arvind Krishna, who replaced Ginni Rometty as IBM’s CEO. Cormier will be counting in part on his relationship with Kirshna to prove IBM was wise in paying one of the highest prices ever for a tech merger.
IBM’s cloud business jumps thanks to Red Hat, but total revenue still down by 3%
“I’m excited to start a new part of my journey with Red Hat,” he says. “I joined when there were less than 200 people, and now we’ve grown to more than 15,000 Red Hatters around the world. We brought open source to the point that it’s THE development methodology for many areas of enterprise computing including infrastructure, application development and associated tools and real innovation.
“Red Hat not only built an expansive product portfolio using open source methodologies, but we built a company around it. I was there for all of that. This is a new challenge for me and my excitement is about what is yet to come.”
The Q&A
In a Q&A, Cormier talks at length about the IBM-Red Hat relationship, working with Whitehurst and Krishna, the challenges and opportunities he sees ahead for Red Hat and how the company has thus far dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic.
- What’s your relationship with IBM’s CEO? He’s obviously a big believer in cloud computing and pushed for the Red Hat acquisition, given Red Hat’s strength in that market. How can your relationship with him impact Red Hat?
I have a great relationship with Arvind. I’ve known him for many years. I trust him with everything; he is a trusted partner and a huge proponent of Red Hat.
From the moment we announced the acquisition, he has been a powerful advocate for Red Hat’s independence and a champion for open source and hybrid cloud.
Red Hat names longtime exec Paul Cormier as CEO, replacing Jim Whitehurst
The most important part of my relationship with Arvind, and Red Hat’s relationship with IBM, is that we all understand the only way this is successful is for Red Hat to stay Red Hat — keep our independence and neutrality, keep our community ties and keep our unique culture and way of working.
- What’s your assessment of how the IBM-Red Hat integration is going? Do you see this as a big plus for Red Hat moving forward once the virus has at least slowed?
We said from the day the acquisition closed that one of the biggest things IBM provides to Red Hat is scale. We’re already seeing the benefits there. We’re stretching into more countries, industries and organizations than ever before.
I expect that our reach into customers will continue to increase, so we’ll be in a position to drive open source a lot further. As for IBM, we’ve been partners for quite some time, but now existing IBM customers will have even more direct access to the open source technologies that are at the cornerstone of hybrid cloud innovation.
- Why do you believe you are qualified for the job?
For roughly two decades, I led the teams that drove Red Hat’s product strategy including the launch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and our subscription business, really betting the company on a new model. In our products strategy, I tried to really understand what customers were telling us they needed.
All roads led to hybrid cloud. Customers want the ability to develop and deploy any app, anywhere. By that, I mean they want to use the best innovation and the best technologies on the right platform for the job at hand. Our customers want maximum choice and flexibility. That’s what we’ve worked to build and where our focus continues to be.
Major acquisitions – like JBoss, Qumranet, Ansible and CoreOS – and other big bets – like our early move to Kubernetes [an open-source container-orchestration system for automating application deployment, scaling, and management] – moved Red Hat beyond Linux and into new areas that helped us deliver a modern IT [information technology] stack based on fully open source solutions.
Open source is unique in that the work that happens in upstream open source communities enables us to understand technology waves and momentum. Red Hat’s involvement and contributions in those communities isn’t for show or convenience. It’s our development model, and it’s proven to be the best innovation model, period. And then the model we’ve built at Red Hat to make those technologies enterprise-ready is second to none – from making them stable, helping to keep them secure and delivering an ecosystem of technologies that are trusted and compatible.
Red Hat’s a special place. We have a unique role in the industry and a culture rooted in openness and collaboration. I think this role requires someone who knows where we’ve come from and how we do things to lead the company into its next phase, and I’m honored to get to do that.
- What are the biggest challenges you face beyond the coronavirus?
This is a dynamic global environment. Attracting and retaining talent, scaling into the opportunity ahead of us and consistently pushing ourselves to make sure we are listening to customers and that we are delivering what they need from us to enable their own innovation and success – those are all things that keep me up at night, so to speak.
I said in a note to Red Hatters that our company vision has become the industry vision. That’s true, but it also means that we have to keep resetting the bar.
- IBM’s has made some management changes, including in cloud operations. How will this affect Red Hat?
We still maintain our neutrality when it comes to how we operate. It continues to be business as usual for us. We’re driving to be the hybrid cloud leader in addition to the open source enterprise leader, and that hasn’t changed. In that way, while we’ll certainly work with IBM’s new cloud leadership team, our work also continues with our other partners. Giving customers maximum choice and flexibility makes that a mandate.
- Will you seek counsel/guidance/advice from Jim Whitehurst? You must have a good relationship given how long you have worked together.
Absolutely, Jim and I have been deeply involved in the direction of this company for the last 12 years. We will continue to talk and collaborate often. What I respect about Jim is that he came to Red Hat and embraced the open development methodology that has been the cornerstone of our product strategy. He took it all the way across the organization.
Jim came from a more traditional, top-down work environment, but he knew he couldn’t bring that same way of doing things to Red Hat. It just wouldn’t work here. During his time as CEO, he embraced and promoted the open organization model that many companies now want to emulate. In his new role, he’s going to remain a strong ally for us and accelerate the synergy that we see across IBM.
- What will be your vision for Red Hat and how does it differ from Jim’s?
It’s not so much that it differs from Jim, but rather that the market we’re looking at now has dramatically shifted. The shift to deliver more digital services has been happening across industries for the last several years, but the need for this has been readily apparent over the past 6-8 weeks. Right now, we see clearly the gaps in the critical infrastructure that connects organizations to their peers, their end users, their customers and their constituents. While it might be annoying to not be able to stream your favorite movie in HD when you want it, it’s disastrous if a financial trading market were to suffer a lapse or if healthcare details couldn’t be shared in a timely manner. So right now, our vision must include how we connect these organizations and how we enhance connectivity, not just for our customers, but for everyone.
- Have you had any cases of coronavirus among your employees? How did you deal with them?
Like most global companies, Red Hat has been impacted by COVID-19. We have cases around the globe – people who are presumed to be sick, people who are sick, and happily, people who have recovered. Some of our associates are on the front line, answering National Guard orders to activate in service of their country. And sadly, we have associates who have lost loved ones. Our hearts go out to them.
The health and safety of our people is always our top priority. I’m extraordinarily proud of our team. We were among the first companies to stop travel to, from and within APAC to keep our people safe. We initiated work from home instructions for specific offices in early February (as we were closing the quarter and our fiscal year) and continued those practices around the globe until our entire workforce was instructed to work from home rather than a Red Hat office in early March.
