Red Hat
Company Overview
Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source solutions. This tenure (2016–2019) coincided with the explosive growth of the open hybrid cloud, the victory of Kubernetes as the orchestration standard, and the mainstream adoption of Ansible for automation.
Company Transformation
| Timeline | Entity | Logo |
|---|---|---|
| 2016–2019 | Red Hat (Classic) |  |
| 2019–Present | Red Hat (Modern) |  |
Company Profile
- Industry: Enterprise Open Source Software
- Tenure Period: June 2016 – January 2019
- Context: The “Container Wars,” the shift from OpenStack to OpenShift (Kubernetes), and the culture of “Upstream First.”
- Key Event: IBM announces intent to acquire Red Hat in October 2018, marking a pivotal moment in open source history just prior to my departure.
Business Card: Senior Solutions Architect, Red Hat Australia
The Strategic Pivot: From OpenStack to Kubernetes
When I transitioned from Cisco to Red Hat in June 2016, the landscape was dominated by Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as the backbone of the enterprise. My initial mandate was clear: leverage the strategic alliance between Cisco and Red Hat to address the local Telco market. At the time, Service Providers were aggressively moving network functions into private cloud environments powered by OpenStack (NFV).
However, the industry was on the brink of a massive shift.
Ending the Container Wars
While we focused on OpenStack, a decisive alignment was occurring elsewhere. Google and Red Hat had joined forces on Kubernetes, effectively ending the “Container Wars” and establishing a new standard for container orchestration. OpenShift began its rapid ascent, evolving from a PaaS into the premier enterprise Kubernetes platform.
The Foundation of Software-Defined Everything
This era was defined by a rapid expansion of the portfolio through strategic acquisitions and integrations that laid the foundation for the automation age:
- Ansible: Though acquired just prior to my arrival, its explosion into the mainstream happened during these years, redefining automation as a simple, agentless standard.
- 3scale (June 2016): Acquired right as I joined, bringing API management into the core hybrid cloud story.
- CoreOS (Jan 2018): A pivotal acquisition that cemented Red Hat’s leadership in the container ecosystem and automated operations.
The IBM Acquisition & A New Chapter
In October 2018, the announcement of IBM’s intent to acquire Red Hat sent shockwaves through the industry. It was a validation of the open source model’s victory—IBM was betting its future on the hybrid cloud foundation we had built.
Recognizing this as a historical inflection point, and having witnessed Red Hat’s fantastic growth, I took the opportunity to project myself into the next phase of technology.
Gratitude
Beyond the technology, Red Hat was defined by its people. The culture of “Open Organization” wasn’t just a slogan; it was lived daily. To the exceptional colleagues who became friends, and to the mentors who taught me that culture scales better than code: thank you. This experience was a leap forward not just professionally, but personally.
Recognition
- Top Gun Award Winner (2016): Recognized as the top performer in the Sales Boot Camp, demonstrating excellence in articulating the Red Hat value proposition and technical solution selling.
Red Hat tenure documentation during the Cloud-Native Transformation era.