Red Hat, which is a subsidiary of IBM, named Paul Cormier as president and chief executive officer, replacing Jim Whitehurst, who is now president of IBM.
Cormier previously served as Red Hat’s president of Products and Technologies. He is credited with pioneering the subscription model that transformed Red Hat from an open source disruptor to an enterprise technology mainstay, moving Red Hat Linux from a freely downloadable operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which now powers more than 90% of Fortune 500 organizations. Cormier has driven more than 25 acquisitions at Red Hat.
In addition to his new role as president of IBM, Whitehurst becomes chairman of Red Hat, succeeding Arvind Krishna, who is now CEO of IBM.
