9 ms·

Paul Cormier Replaces Jim Whitehurst as Red Hat CEO

122 points by ldng 7y ago

brian_herman__ 7y ago
Hopefully this will be like when Apple bought Next.
- person_of_color 7y ago
  Or Greece’s reverse invasion of Rome!
- syshum 7y ago
  I hope is not like when IBM bought the Weather Company then proceeded to destroy all the good things Weather Underground did
  - abrowne 7y ago
    Did anyone from the Weather Company join IBM senior leadership?
    - aquaticsunset 7y ago
      David Kenny ran Watson for a couple years.
fanatic2pope 7y ago
Wow, for the first time in decades I see a sliver of hope for IBM's relevance.
- acruns 7y ago
  lol!
- mathattack 7y ago
  RedHat shares IBM’s model of “change the terms and product definitions every year and audit folks to death who can’t switch providers” They are going to irrelevance together.
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    I've worked with several large firms that had large footprints of Red Hat products and never heard about them being audited. You're confusing them with Oracle.
    - stuff4ben 7y ago
      I worked for Cisco who were big RH users (RHEL, OpenStack, OpenShift, Quay, etc). We were audited and it basically comes up when contracts are renewed. It's not a bad thing, you just need to be honest about what you're using and how much and then just pay the man. Or don't and switch to other offerings. One thing I liked about RH is that they worked with you vs Oracle which was pure evil when it came being audited.
    - op00to 7y ago
      No, just sounds like that person can’t keep track of how many system they deploy.
      - linuxftw 7y ago
        Well, it's not always as simple as 'how many systems' even when you're talking about just an operating system. There's licensing based on cores and/or sockets. Then there's licensing for virtual machines. Oracle was really nasty in some of the licensing scenarios, IIRC. If you ran an Oracle DB on an unlicensed platform in a VM (such as VMWare), then when you got audited, you needed to pay for how many cores/sockets were in the physical server, rather than just how much CPU your VM was using.
        op00to 7y ago
        Is there evidence of Red Hat ever doing that kind of gotcha licensing?
MelioRatio 7y ago
If anyone wants to find out more on what Cormier wants to focus on over the coming years, he did a small QnA: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/get-know-red-hat-president-and-ceo-paul-cormier https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/get-know-red-hat-president-an... It will be interesting to see, how his management style is going to impact Red Hat over the coming years. Considering his background and acumen, I feel like there is going to be a stronger focus on tailored services and specific solutions for organizations. They are already very active in the health care and financial industry, so this could be an area they might expand.
- stuff4ben 7y ago
  A lot of IBM products are in the cloud and the focus from Whitehurst as IBM president is that cloud, containers/K8s/RHOSP, and edge are the big things that will be going on. It will be very interesting to see how RH plays into the broader IBM strategy. Will RH become the platform and IBM becomes tooling, services, and products on top of that platform? Or will RH move to more consultancy and enterprise IT services? Coming from Cisco where the acquired company always gets folded into the mothership, I find it very interesting to see IBM's stance of keeping RH alone and mostly separate. At least for now...
  - cachestash 7y ago
    its very possible and widely touted that it could go the other way, in that Red Hat takes over IBM (culturally. Red Hat certainly has a strong enough culture to do that.
  - eskaytwo 7y ago
    Except Meraki - that’s been kept seperate in a similar way to RedHat.
williamstein 7y ago
Even more interesting > "Red Hat's CEO for the past 12 years moves to take on the role of IBM president"
- abrowne 7y ago
  Here's IBM release about that: https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-01-30-Arvind-Krishna-Elected-IBM-Chief-Executive-Officer https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-01-30-Arvind-Krishna-Elected-I... President seems like second-in-command, below CEO. (And the outgoing CEO was both.) Am I understanding that right?
  - cpetty 7y ago
    Correct -- Ginni Rometty was CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board. She remains Chairman, while Arvind Krishna is now CEO and Whitehurst is President. This is the first time in a while that the IBM President & CEO roles have been divided among two different people.
    - lowdose 7y ago
      The president title was a thing for people claiming the top spot without being the founder. It doesn't make sense to split CEO & President role between two people, but when the fable is told long enough the people who tell believe it themselves.
      - cachestash 7y ago
        Its the co-CEO strategy, or two in box. Its becoming quite popular as of late.
        stingraycharles 7y ago
        Why is that? I can’t imagine it going well for an extended period of time.
texascloud 7y ago
Is this good for IBM?
- rwmj 7y ago
  In the sense that we hope Red Hat takes over IBM and makes it a success again, yes.
- sergius 7y ago
  Both are walking dinosaurs at this point waiting for a meteorite...
zapita 7y ago
Good for Paul. He has wanted the CEO job forever, and was notoriously bitter about being passed over last time. Don’t expect a revolution in Red Hat’s strategy or culture. Paul was already extremely influential, especially on product and R&D which are not Jim’s strong suits. Things to know about Paul: - He is very competitive and has a zero-sum approach to competition: for him to win, someone else has to lose. - He has a bad temper. If you work on the same floor as him, you will hear yelling. - He doesn’t shy away from Oracle-style tactics. Expect customer audits to get more hardball; more aggressive use of anti-competitive bundling (“if you use this competitor’s product on RHEL, we will not support that RHEL host”).
- notacoward 7y ago
  Oh, he's not going to like the phrase "Oracle-style" at all. Another thing people should know about Paul Cormier is that his hatred for Oracle knows no bounds. There's certainly no love lost between the two companies at any level, but even in that context the depth of his loathing for them seemed notable. Some might say excessive. I was there for eight years BTW.
  - zapita 7y ago
    That is true - the hatred of Oracle runs deep. But when it comes to competitive tactics, they have more in common than the Red Hat marketing brochure would have you believe.
    - op00to 7y ago
      Like what?
      - zapita 7y ago
        Like what I wrote in my original comment: > Expect customer audits to get more hardball; more aggressive use of anti-competitive bundling (“if you use this competitor’s product on RHEL, we will not support that RHEL host”)
woodandsteel 7y ago
Cringely on IBM, Red Hat, and Whitehurst: https://www.cringely.com/2020/01/31/predictions-for-2020-ibm-and-trump/ https://www.cringely.com/2020/01/31/predictions-for-2020-ibm...
freedomben 7y ago
I work for Red Hat and wasn't going to comment (as I don't know Paul), but I feel somewhat compelled by so much of the negativity here. Red Hat, like all companies, is not a monolith. It's a huge mix of people from different places, cultures, etc. It's a salad bowl of personalities, values, and priorities. Somehow we come together to make some amazing products. As I mentioned above I can't comment on Paul because I don't know him, but I can comment on what I've seen at Red Hat. We are super forgiving about "license violations." I've never seen the "Oracle tactics" and if I do, I'll probably quit. IBM is not infecting Red Hat, in fact it's the other way around. I don't interact with IBM at all but from what I've seen at a distance we are spreading our culture to them. I don't agree with every policy of ours regarding RHEL and subscriptions, etc, as I feel it disincentivizes community usage too much, but I've never seen it used punitively or aggressively against anyone, especially our customers. I choose to remain optimistic that the future is bright, until there's actual evidence that it may not be true. Jumping to conclusions early is at best unproductive and at worst could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm excited to see what the future will bring.

122 points by ldng 7y ago

brian_herman__ 7y ago

Hopefully this will be like when Apple bought Next.

person_of_color 7y ago
Or Greece’s reverse invasion of Rome!
syshum 7y ago
I hope is not like when IBM bought the Weather Company then proceeded to destroy all the good things Weather Underground did
- abrowne 7y ago
  Did anyone from the Weather Company join IBM senior leadership?
  - aquaticsunset 7y ago
    David Kenny ran Watson for a couple years.

fanatic2pope 7y ago

Wow, for the first time in decades I see a sliver of hope for IBM's relevance.

acruns 7y ago
lol!
mathattack 7y ago
RedHat shares IBM’s model of “change the terms and product definitions every year and audit folks to death who can’t switch providers” They are going to irrelevance together.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  I've worked with several large firms that had large footprints of Red Hat products and never heard about them being audited. You're confusing them with Oracle.
  - stuff4ben 7y ago
    I worked for Cisco who were big RH users (RHEL, OpenStack, OpenShift, Quay, etc). We were audited and it basically comes up when contracts are renewed. It's not a bad thing, you just need to be honest about what you're using and how much and then just pay the man. Or don't and switch to other offerings. One thing I liked about RH is that they worked with you vs Oracle which was pure evil when it came being audited.
  - op00to 7y ago
    No, just sounds like that person can’t keep track of how many system they deploy.
    - linuxftw 7y ago
      Well, it's not always as simple as 'how many systems' even when you're talking about just an operating system. There's licensing based on cores and/or sockets. Then there's licensing for virtual machines. Oracle was really nasty in some of the licensing scenarios, IIRC. If you ran an Oracle DB on an unlicensed platform in a VM (such as VMWare), then when you got audited, you needed to pay for how many cores/sockets were in the physical server, rather than just how much CPU your VM was using.
      - op00to 7y ago
        Is there evidence of Red Hat ever doing that kind of gotcha licensing?

MelioRatio 7y ago

If anyone wants to find out more on what Cormier wants to focus on over the coming years, he did a small QnA: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/get-know-red-hat-president-and-ceo-paul-cormier https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/get-know-red-hat-president-an... It will be interesting to see, how his management style is going to impact Red Hat over the coming years. Considering his background and acumen, I feel like there is going to be a stronger focus on tailored services and specific solutions for organizations. They are already very active in the health care and financial industry, so this could be an area they might expand.

stuff4ben 7y ago
A lot of IBM products are in the cloud and the focus from Whitehurst as IBM president is that cloud, containers/K8s/RHOSP, and edge are the big things that will be going on. It will be very interesting to see how RH plays into the broader IBM strategy. Will RH become the platform and IBM becomes tooling, services, and products on top of that platform? Or will RH move to more consultancy and enterprise IT services? Coming from Cisco where the acquired company always gets folded into the mothership, I find it very interesting to see IBM's stance of keeping RH alone and mostly separate. At least for now...
- cachestash 7y ago
  its very possible and widely touted that it could go the other way, in that Red Hat takes over IBM (culturally. Red Hat certainly has a strong enough culture to do that.
- eskaytwo 7y ago
  Except Meraki - that’s been kept seperate in a similar way to RedHat.

williamstein 7y ago

Even more interesting > "Red Hat's CEO for the past 12 years moves to take on the role of IBM president"

abrowne 7y ago
Here's IBM release about that: https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-01-30-Arvind-Krishna-Elected-IBM-Chief-Executive-Officer https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-01-30-Arvind-Krishna-Elected-I... President seems like second-in-command, below CEO. (And the outgoing CEO was both.) Am I understanding that right?
- cpetty 7y ago
  Correct -- Ginni Rometty was CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board. She remains Chairman, while Arvind Krishna is now CEO and Whitehurst is President. This is the first time in a while that the IBM President & CEO roles have been divided among two different people.
  - lowdose 7y ago
    The president title was a thing for people claiming the top spot without being the founder. It doesn't make sense to split CEO & President role between two people, but when the fable is told long enough the people who tell believe it themselves.
    - cachestash 7y ago
      Its the co-CEO strategy, or two in box. Its becoming quite popular as of late.
      - stingraycharles 7y ago
        Why is that? I can’t imagine it going well for an extended period of time.

texascloud 7y ago

Is this good for IBM?

rwmj 7y ago
In the sense that we hope Red Hat takes over IBM and makes it a success again, yes.
sergius 7y ago
Both are walking dinosaurs at this point waiting for a meteorite...

zapita 7y ago

Good for Paul. He has wanted the CEO job forever, and was notoriously bitter about being passed over last time. Don’t expect a revolution in Red Hat’s strategy or culture. Paul was already extremely influential, especially on product and R&D which are not Jim’s strong suits. Things to know about Paul: - He is very competitive and has a zero-sum approach to competition: for him to win, someone else has to lose. - He has a bad temper. If you work on the same floor as him, you will hear yelling. - He doesn’t shy away from Oracle-style tactics. Expect customer audits to get more hardball; more aggressive use of anti-competitive bundling (“if you use this competitor’s product on RHEL, we will not support that RHEL host”).

notacoward 7y ago
Oh, he's not going to like the phrase "Oracle-style" at all. Another thing people should know about Paul Cormier is that his hatred for Oracle knows no bounds. There's certainly no love lost between the two companies at any level, but even in that context the depth of his loathing for them seemed notable. Some might say excessive. I was there for eight years BTW.
- zapita 7y ago
  That is true - the hatred of Oracle runs deep. But when it comes to competitive tactics, they have more in common than the Red Hat marketing brochure would have you believe.
  - op00to 7y ago
    Like what?
    - zapita 7y ago
      Like what I wrote in my original comment: > Expect customer audits to get more hardball; more aggressive use of anti-competitive bundling (“if you use this competitor’s product on RHEL, we will not support that RHEL host”)

woodandsteel 7y ago

Cringely on IBM, Red Hat, and Whitehurst: https://www.cringely.com/2020/01/31/predictions-for-2020-ibm-and-trump/ https://www.cringely.com/2020/01/31/predictions-for-2020-ibm...

freedomben 7y ago

I work for Red Hat and wasn't going to comment (as I don't know Paul), but I feel somewhat compelled by so much of the negativity here. Red Hat, like all companies, is not a monolith. It's a huge mix of people from different places, cultures, etc. It's a salad bowl of personalities, values, and priorities. Somehow we come together to make some amazing products. As I mentioned above I can't comment on Paul because I don't know him, but I can comment on what I've seen at Red Hat. We are super forgiving about "license violations." I've never seen the "Oracle tactics" and if I do, I'll probably quit. IBM is not infecting Red Hat, in fact it's the other way around. I don't interact with IBM at all but from what I've seen at a distance we are spreading our culture to them. I don't agree with every policy of ours regarding RHEL and subscriptions, etc, as I feel it disincentivizes community usage too much, but I've never seen it used punitively or aggressively against anyone, especially our customers. I choose to remain optimistic that the future is bright, until there's actual evidence that it may not be true. Jumping to conclusions early is at best unproductive and at worst could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm excited to see what the future will bring.