Red Hat exec: new CEO has open-source cred
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Michael Tiemann, a Red Hat executive with years of open-source experience, says soon-to-be-CEO Jim Whitehurst understands the open-source movement.
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U.S.-based Red Hat Inc., the world's top distributor of open-source Linux software, expects its international business to increase to half its sales within 12 months, an executive said on Tuesday.
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There's a lot of money to be made in open source, both as a shareholder and for the company.
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CRN India: Red Hat aims to more deeply penetrate the enterprise by launching its first Linux distribution based on the Linux 2.6 kernel.
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Red Hat Inc. , a Linux software distributor that in July said it would restate three years' of financial results, on Thursday named Charles Peters as chief financial officer.
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TechWeb - CEO Jonathan Schwartz outlines his company's vision for supplying existing and future Web 2.0 companies with the open source tools they'll need.
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OCTOBER 01, 2004  - After his company announced that it&#39;s acquiring security and authentication tools from Netscape Security Solutions to bolster its software arsenal (see story), Red Hat Inc.
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(InfoWorld) - Leaders of Microsoft's strategy to make its products more interoperable with competitive technologies said the company still hopes to strike a Linux pact with Red Hat similar to the partnerships it's forged with Linux vendors Novell, Xandros, and Linspire. "We'd love to do the same deal with Red Hat," said Tom Robertson, general manager of corporate interoperability and standards at Microsoft in an interview Friday. "We're always open to talking with them." That sentiment so far has not been the same on Red Hat's end, as the company has said it's not interested in a deal. Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day said Friday that is still the case. "We continue to believe that open source and the innovation it represents should not be subject to an unsubstantiated tax that lacks transparency," she said in an e-mail. Still, some wonder -- as Microsoft lines up the other Linux ducks in a neat little row -- if Red Hat might be next, and rumors suggest a pact might be imminent. Microsoft's latest Linux deal came Thursday in an intellectual property-sharing and interoperabilityÂ agreement with LinspireÂ that would shield the company's customers from Microsoft patent-infringement claims. The deal follows oneÂ struck by Microsoft and Linux distributor XandrosÂ last week, as well asÂ a high-profile and financially significantÂ deal with NovellÂ late last year. Microsoft has said it is seeking these partnerships for a couple of reasons. The one Robertson is most interested in is interoperability, as he -- along with Jean Paoli, general manager, interoperability and XML architecture -- is in charge of Microsoft's 18-month company-wide strategy in this area. Robertson said Microsoft customers have demanded the company address interoperability issues with other companies' software, including open source, and that IP (intellectual property) in those products is a concern for them. "If you look across the industry, you see companies working together to address IP on behalf of their customer base," he said. Microsoft has publicly said that Linux and other open source softwareÂ violates 235 of the company's patents. But rather than seek litigation as a way to settle these IP claims, Microsoft is striking these individual deals, Robertson said. However, much has been made of the fact that the company has not publicly disclosed any of the patents it claims open source software is violating. Robertson would not address why Microsoft will not show its patents and stopped short of claiming the deals with Novell, Linspire, and Xandros prove those companies are indeed violating Microsoft IP. None of the Linux companies will say so, either, and Novell in fact has vehemently denied infringement. This discrepancy is one reason some feel Red Hat will never sign up for an indemnification deal with Microsoft. The size and business viability of the companies that have signed on is another. Novell was flagging when its deal was struck -- and the company has continued to wane even since -- and some familiar with how it happened said it was a bailout to save the vendor from being split up and sold piecemeal. Indeed, Novell's U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing about the deal revealed that Novell got $348 million up front from Microsoft for patent cooperation and Linux coupons, while having to shell out only $40 million to Microsoft in return. Though Microsoft will not comment on the financial terms of deals with Xandros and Linspire, those familiar with the agreements said those companies also received financial compensation from Microsoft. This begs the question that if interoperability and protecting customers are Microsoft's ultimate goals for the deals, as Robertson said, why is the company so interested in Linux companies that ultimately don't affect that many customers? Many -- particularly those in the Linux camp -- suspect Microsoft is trying to make it appear that open source distributors are violating Microsoft IP to vilify them in an effort to dissuade customers from using Linux and other open source technologies. Bruce Perens, a longtime Linux and open source advocate, said Microsoft is giving Linux companies that are on the edge of going out of business money to create the illusion that Linux vendors are stealing its IP. Perens is a vice president at SourceLabs, a company that provides testing, management, and certification of open source software to users. "Here is Microsoft out collecting the losers in the Linux business and paying them money so they can ... paint open source as music pirates out there using Microsoft technology without a license," he said. "I think they're out to scare people." Even if this is the case, it take two to tango, and it's important to note that companies such as Novell, Linspire, and Xandros benefit in various ways from their deals with Microsoft. Aside from any financial compensation, the companies also gain access to Microsoft technology that would make their own Linux products more viable in the marketplace, analysts said. "These companies want the deals with Microsoft because it will make the products more attractive and more compatible with the Windows world," said Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner. "It's pretty clear that there is definitely value for these companies."
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Red Hat Inc.'s woes this week raise the issue of whether IT investors are turning sour on open source. A somewhat disappointing forecast for the next quarter has investors fleeing, just as they have from the company's open-source rival, Novell Inc.
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Red Hat Inc. hired a new chief financial officer as it tries to bolster its sagging stock price and expand into new foreign markets.
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Confusion at Club Badgeware Analysis Should you believe Red Hat's claims that its new Exchange marketplace for "open source business applications" contains nothing but open source business applications? We say "no" - since not even Red Hat appears to have a good answer for this question.â¦
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A newcomer on the open source scene has received funding to expand operations and develop new product lines.
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Government support for open source is helping Red Hat grow its business in the Asia-Pacific region.
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When Matthew Szulik left Red Hat abruptly for family health reasons in December, many people were scratching their heads over the company&#39;s new choice of CEO: a young executive from Delta Airlines, Jim Whitehurst. But Whitehurst&#39;s chief operating officer title at Delta and position outside of the technology industry are misleading; a peek into his past reveals a computer science degree and a passion for open source technology, not to mention a smooth operator who helped bring a struggling airline out of bankruptcy.Still, Whitehurst, 40, has big shoes to fill in replacing Szulik, the man who took a small, unknown company and turned it into a savvy business competitor that made Linux a household name and struck fear in the hearts of much bigger rivals&#160;such as&#160;Microsoft. Today, Red Hat is the leading Linux vendor and is financially sound, but the company is in a pivotal phase of reinventing itself as a broader open source software provider and a multibillion-dollar technology leader that can compete long-term with much larger companies.Whitehurst spoke with IDG News Service this week about the key findings of his first month on the job and where he thinks Red Hat should focus its attention to evolve at a sustainable pace. This is an edited version of that interview.IDGNS: I was surprised to find out that you have a computer science background when I heard you came to Red Hat as COO from Delta Airlines. I didn&#8217;t expect you to be such a techie.Whitehurst: I do have geek cred. For some reason, your reputation is always based on your prior experience. When I was at the airline, people said, &quot;Who is this strategy consultant running an airline?&quot; Now I&#39;m an airline guy running a technology company. I wish I was called an airline guy when I was at the airline!IDGNS: Was this a personal interest in open source that led you to Red Hat? Was Delta a big user of Linux?Whitehurst: Delta certainly uses some REL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and JBoss, but it&#39;s more of a personal interest. I was hacking around with Slackware, one of the early Linuxes that was out there in the &#39;90s, and an early adopter and user of Fedora all the way through when I got the call for joining Red Hat. It&#39;s always been a passion of mine, so the opportunity to get out there to lead is an extraordinary privilege and honor for me.IDGNS: Red Hat is currently in a great position as leader of the Linux market and has been doing well financially, but the company has been called upon by Wall Street to grow and possibly diversify the business. When you look at the company, what are its biggest challenges right now?Whitehurst: Let me start off by saying I&#39;ve only been here a few weeks. The first month [has basically been] going out on the road with customers, employees, with investors, with analysts, with our partners-slash-competitors and really trying to get a sense of the business, what&#8217;s working well and what&#8217;s not. The good news is, most things are working well -- from the standpoint of being a very healthy business growing rapidly with healthy financials.I think you&#8217;re right there are certainly areas where we can do a better job. First off, I would just say the general organizational focus. We actually do a lot of different things, support a lot of different projects. We have to be careful that we&#8217;re focusing on the right things and putting our investment dollars where they&#8217;ll have the most impact. I&#39;m still going through the details of what we do and what we don&#39;t do, so stay tuned on that.A second area where there&#8217;s still a lot of opportunity for Red Hat would be basically [in] processes and systems, including IT systems and governance, especially for a company that&#39;s grown so rapidly. A lot of those processes and systems and ways of doing business are different for a company like Red Hat that&#39;s [US]$500 million on its way to a multibillion-dollar company than they are for a small company. Some time and attention on basic execution to make sure we have the processes and systems in place to grow, and grow healthily, are another area where I plan to spend a fair amount of time.IDGNS: And what about your experience makes you well-suited to help meet those challenges and diversify Red Hat&#39;s products beyond Linux into more of a full open source software provider?Whitehurst: For starters, I am an operator. I am pretty good at getting a company to focus, and focus on a few things. We certainly did that at Delta and did that well in the turnaround. Obviously, having come from a larger company and having run a larger company, I have a good sense of the processes and systems we need to make sure governance [and] processes work well.About whether we need to diversify or not: People are asking, &quot;Well, should we have bought [open source database company] MySQL?&quot; [Editor&#39;s note: Sun Microsystems said last month it is&#160;buying MySQL for about $1 billion.] We are still a very small-share player in the server OS market and a small-share player in middleware [with JBoss]. If you look at the quality of our technology, it&#39;s the best. We feel very good about that. We still have basic execution to do to reach our full potential in the markets we&#39;re in. So I don&#39;t feel the need to diversify until we nail the product and are fully [satisfied] with our existing products. I&#39;m not sure we want to divert our time and attention to other things.IDGNS: A lot of people have been critical of Red Hat for what it&#8217;s done so far with JBoss, and think success with this is key to proving Red Hat can evolve beyond Linux. How are you going to make that business more successful?Whitehurst: Obviously execution and commercial execution will be big focuses going forward [for JBoss]. We fundamentally changed the JBoss business model from a big consulting/support [business] to our enterprise/.org models that we had with REL [on the enterprise side] and Fedora [on the .org side]. It has, without a doubt, proven to be a very successful model, and one could argue it&#39;s about the only demonstrated successful model of any size with open source. In the same way we have Fedora and REL, we have the .org version of JBoss and the enterprise edition. JBoss had a different business model before, but we think our business model has proven the most successful and the most durable. It&#39;s the right decision. It just takes a while.The good news of that also shows that it&#8217;s not easy to develop a good business model around open source, so it&#39;s a relatively defensible model going forward. We feel very good about where JBoss is. ... We think we can grow twice as fast as the core REL business.Red Hat&#8217;s never been involved in any material way in the application components of the stack. We do provide a full open source stack with the LAMP stack. We will continue to do that, so we&#39;re playing there to some extent. In terms of our focus and where we&#39;ll invest our team and attention and dollars, the [market for the] infrastructure component of software worldwide is close to $100 billion. We&#39;re a $500 million software company. I would argue we&#39;ve barely scratched the surface. I&#39;d much rather we make sure we make progress there than get into the CRM business. Once we&#39;ve achieved our full potential in our core businesses, we can open the aperture. But I want to make sure the company is focused on the potential of our businesses in that core market.IDGNS: Microsoft is coming out with Windows Server 2008 pretty soon. Do you see this as a good opportunity to snag Windows customers who may be thinking of upgrading and instead moving them over to Linux? Is there still competition in this space, or will it always be the Linux camp sticks with Linux, and the Windows camp sticks with Windows?Whitehurst: We&#8217;re seeing a lot of migrations from Microsoft to Linux, from Unix to Linux or even Unix to Microsoft. There&#39;s a big battleground out there. Anytime there is a significant upgrade or change, there is an opportunity for us. Anytime a customer stands back and says, &quot;Let me reassess this&quot; and &quot;Do we want to upgrade?&quot; that&#39;s great for us because our value proposition is much more compelling for our competitors. Whenever there is a reason for customers to reassess, that gives us an opportunity to show our value, so we&#39;ll be out there aggressively this year.IDGNS: Much was made of Microsoft&#39;s interoperability deal with Novell in November 2006. Has that deal hurt Red Hat in any way? Do you even view Novell as a major competitor anymore?Whitehurst: There may be a deal or two out there, but it hasn&#8217;t come up to my level. We really don&#8217;t see them that much in the market. They&#39;re not really a factor. Given our market share and certified ecosystems of partners -- [those] really drive our position.IDGNS: Are you worried about&#160;Microsoft&#39;s patent claims against Linux, which were recently&#160;dismissed again by Linus Torvalds?Whitehurst: We&#8217;ve spent a lot of time looking at that, and we have an assurance program for our customers, so they don&#39;t need to worry. Microsoft for years now has talked about 235 patents [that they own that Linux violates], but they&#8217;ve yet to tell us any of them and we continue to ask, &quot;Show us what they are.&quot; How many times can you keep saying it before you pass on the opportunity to do anything? At first people got concerned, but after years and years and years, you recognize it&#39;s a lot of bark and no bite. We never want to take any claims of intellectual property violations lightly, but those have been around so long with absolutely nothing behind them. After a while, it becomes harder and harder to take those seriously.IDGNS: Where would you like to see Red Hat be in five years?Whitehurst: Again, this company is currently the open source leader. Open source is still really a nascent part of the IT infrastructure in corporate America. As the leader of open source, one of the things we need to do, and should do, is foster and further open source awareness and adoption in worldwide IT. My view of success includes how well Red Hat does that in the future as a multibillion-dollar company.We want to see the continued adoption of open source as key technology across corporate IT. [We&#39;ll] continue to foster communities of use in the developing world where we operate, and communities of use where we remain sure that information and software remains free and unencumbered by proprietary formats. When we do well, we do good. We certainly have aspirations for size and growth and profitability, but we do recognize we have a role in fostering adoption and the benefits that go along with that. The great news is, this is a company in wonderful shape with a fantastic brand and market position and extraordinary, high-quality people. It&#39;s up to us not to squander that opportunity.
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Red Hat Inc vice president for open source affairs Michael Tiemann has come-out in favor of open sourcing Java to cultivate innovation and help defend against Microsoft Corp&#39;s .
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Linux distributor Red Hat Inc has established a new presence in China to promote the use of open source software in the country, following up on plans announced back in January.
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Red Hat&#39;s new CEO plans to keep the company focused on its core Linux OS and middleware business while also improving the service it offers to customers, he said Thursday.&quot;It&#39;s a very exciting time for Red Hat, we have a very bright future in front of us. Our business model is strong and our growth remains very, very robust,&quot; said Jim Whitehurst, who was speaking in Tokyo during his third week in the job.Whitehurst came to Red Hat from Delta Air Lines&#160;where he served as chief operating officer for two years. During that time he gained experience of being a customer of major IT vendors and says he knows well what is expected of companies like Red Hat.&quot;From a user perspective an absolute focus on service is critical. Based on talking to customers so far, one observation I have is that we need to re-double our effort working with our various partners in service,&quot; he said.Because much of Red Hat&#39;s business is done through resellers and the channel, there can sometimes be disconnects in customer service. For example, Red Hat might end up telling a customer to contact the partner while the partner refers the customer back to Red Hat, he said.But is Whitehurst the right man to be talking about customer service? After all, he came to Red Hat from an industry that is the subject of frequent complaints from its customers.&quot;I think airlines only beat out cable TV operators in customer satisfaction surveys so I&#39;m certainly not going to defend the airline industry&#39;s record on customer service,&quot; he said. Experience at Delta taught him the need to pick a small number of things and do them well to improve overall satisfaction, he said.&quot;The Delta situation was the fastest major bankruptcy ever and during that situation our customer service numbers actually went up quite significantly. We did it by focusing on a couple of things. In the airline industry it&#39;s clean airplanes and on-time, those were the two things we focused on. I know those sound like two little things but they significantly impact the customer experience,&quot; said Whitehurst.For Red Hat he said he is still working on which areas will be the priorities that he focuses upon.&quot;I understand the importance from the customer&#39;s perspective of excellent customer service in IT,&quot; he said. &quot;As an industry, information technology is not known for excellence in serving our customers well and I have been adamant from day one that everything Red Hat does will be viewed through the eyes of the customer.&quot;