RHEL pusher Paul Cormier appointed CEO to lead Red Hat into the IBM era

Long-serving Red Hatter Paul Cormier has been named president and chief exec as his predecessor, Jim Whitehurst, sets off for fields Big and Blue. Cormier is very much a Red Hat insider, having joined in 2001 and overseen the addition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) to the company's line-up. He is also credited with …

[Robert Grant]

Heaping praise on new IBM boss Krishna, whom Cormier insisted was "committed to keeping Red Hat Red Hat", the new Red Hat CEO added, perhaps ominously, that "IBM knows that the best way for us to continue to lead the industry is to allow us to stay on our mission while helping us scale."

"And we will now unveil our new company branding. Let me introduce... Big Blue Hat!" <waits for applause>

[trevorde]

Inevitably...

"Resource Actions" in about 18 months as the expected synergies [insert other marketing BS here] fail to materialise. However, CEO still gets massive bonus and a new helicopter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reverse Takeover...

Someone within IBM and most likely in the know on some stuff ...

This person indicated that Ginny was out and that the folks from RedHat will move up and start to take over the C level spots and their directs.

Its a good way to get new blood into the top levels of the company in order to effect change.

I told said person that I'll believe it when I see it.

Looks like I was told the truth.

Posted Anon for the obvious reasons. Could have said something earlier, but obviously had I done that... then my sources won't talk to me. ;-)

[bombastic bob]

Re: Reverse Takeover...

RH taking over IBM instead?

And here I was hoping IBM would FIRE POETTERING!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reverse Takeover...

IBM "Big Blue" and Red Hat... I don't know what they think they got, but its big and purple.

[Lars]

I read this as good news for both red and blue.

[Anonymous Coward]

okay then!

"Cormier, who described RHEL as "by far the most successful thing I ever have or ever will work on""

good to see he's fired up with ambition for RH's future products...

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM is a hollowed out shell of its former self, Rometty saw to that quite handily and then pulled the golden parachute rip-cord (or perhaps it was pulled for her by the board.) During these years, IBM delivered an absolute debacle of a payroll system to the Canadian Federal Government called Phoenix. Deployed in 2011. [1] It has never worked correctly, it's _still_ not fixed. [2] Things are so bad they're looking at a new SAP based system from Germany to solve their problems. (And this is the point where your anonymous commenter, knowing the history of SAP projects starts laughing maniacally much like Mark Hamill's Joker.)

Right now, I wouldn't trust IBM to pour sand out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

If you're a fan of Redhat I'd brace for a very bumpy ride ahead. If Redhat gets sucked down the big blue whirlpool of doom, at least it'll take SystemD with it. (Tux, hear our prayer.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_pay_system

[2] http://www.mcleodgovernance.com/rising-ashes-canadian-phoenix-pay-system-debacle/

[Anonymous Coward]

Committed to keeping Red Hat Red Hat?

Ie: committed to keeping the red hat brand , everything else will eventually be merged into whatever IBMs unix division is called this week. Which might not be such a bad thing - AIX was a top notch unix and Linux with systemd these days , well , not so much any more sadly. Obtuse, over complicated, bug ridden and with a huge attack vector is really not what you want for your init process.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Committed to keeping Red Hat Red Hat?

> AIX was a top notch unix

Say again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Committed to keeping Red Hat Red Hat?

Clearly you never used Slowlaris back in the day.

[Alistair]

For the record, I joined RH on Oct 8 2018.

It was not good news that IBM had put out to buy them a few days later.

I'm still here, watching closely. I like what I see so far. I'm reasonably confident that I will not end up in something like GDF, which I had the misfortune to experience. (yes I spent time at 3600 Steeles after being outsourced there).

[fredesmite2]

A cool $20m parachute

Virginia Rometty was the only IBM employee who managed to make it to retirement before being laid off due to her age.