Matt Hicks, who started as a developer on Red Hat’s IT team has been named as the successor of Paul Cormier as president and chief executive officer. Cornier will serve as chair of Red Hat.

Prior to the latest appointment, Hicks served as Red Hat’s executive vice president of Products and Technologies. Hicks was a foundational member of the engineering team that developed Red Hat OpenShift which has grown into the backbone for hybrid cloud deployments across industries. In this role, Hicks oversaw the company’s product strategy and engineering.

It was also during his tenure in the role that Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud strategy and portfolio have expanded to help customers build, deploy and manage any application, anywhere: from on-premises environment to multiple clouds and to the edge. This includes delivering new managed cloud services that help customers speed the development of cloud-native applications, new capabilities to accelerate AI (artificial intelligence) development, product variants enabling edge use cases, and new security approaches that span hybrid cloud environments.

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“Matt is the exemplification of a true Red Hatter and is absolutely the right person to step into this role,” Paul Cormier, chair, Red Hat, said in a media advisory. “His experience across different parts of our business has given him depth and breadth of knowledge about how we can best work together to scale and remain the open hybrid cloud leader. He understands our product strategy and the direction the industry is moving in a way that’s second to none.”

Open hybrid cloud

Hicks has more than 25 years of experience in Linux and a background in computer engineering. He is well-regarded for his work with customers and partners to solve the next generation of IT challenges with open source innovation.

“When I first joined Red Hat, I was passionate about open source and our mission, and I wanted to be a part of that,” Hicks said. “I am humbled and energized to be stepping into this role at this moment. There has never been a more exciting time to be in our industry and the opportunity in front of Red Hat is vast. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and prove that open source technology truly can unlock the world’s potential.”

In his message to Red Hat associates, Hicks said emphasized the role of open source development in expediting better innovation.

“It brings together people with diverse experiences to work together to solve a common challenge and spark new ideas. This is Red Hat,” he said. “I believe we are at the perfect time in our journey to simplify. There is power in simplicity and focus. Our strategy is to deliver open hybrid cloud. To do that, we must deliver the platforms that enable customer success from on-premises environments to cloud services and at the edge. We will refine our playbook to the simplest possible set of things to deliver in these areas, and with that simplicity, I believe we can become best-in-class in everything we do.”