Red Hat Appoints Matt Hicks As President and Chief Executive Officer

Red Hat, Inc. has announced Matt Hicks as its president and chief executive officer. Hicks, who previously served as Red Hat’s executive vice president of Products and Technologies, succeeds Paul Cormier, who will serve as chairman of Red Hat.

Known as a hands-on leader within Red Hat, Hicks joined the company in 2006 as a developer on the IT team. He quickly rose via leadership positions across the organization, helping Red Hat solidify itself as the open hybrid cloud technology leader. Most notably, 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.

Open source software is the IT industry’s innovation engine. With more than 25 years experience in Linux, a background in computer engineering, industry vision and business acumen, Hicks is well-regarded for his work with customers and partners to solve the next generation of IT challenges with open source innovation.

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

Meanwhile Paul Cormier has been picked as Red Hat’s chairman. He will continue to work alongside IBM chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna in this capacity. Both Cormier and Hicks will report to Krishna.

“Red Hat serves as the foundation of so many clients’ technology strategies because of its open source and hybrid cloud capabilities. Matt’s deep experience and technical knowledge of Red Hat’s entire portfolio makes him the ideal leader as Red Hat continues to grow and to develop innovative, industry leading software”, commented Arvind Krishna, chairman and CEO, IBM.