Red Hat

Red Hat
Name	Red Hat
Type	Public company
Traded as	NYSE: RHT (historical)
Foundation	0 1993
Founders	Bob Young, Marc Ewing
Location	Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.
Key people	Matt Hicks (President and CEO)
Industry	Software

Red Hat. It is a prominent American multinational software company that provides open-source software products to the enterprise community. Founded in 1993, the company became widely known for its commercially supported Linux distribution, which played a pivotal role in bringing open-source technologies into mainstream corporate IT environments. Its business model revolutionized software sales by coupling free software with subscription-based support, training, and integration services, a strategy that led to its acquisition by IBM in 2019 for approximately $34 billion.

History

The company was founded in 1993 by Bob Young and Marc Ewing, with its early operations based around the distribution of software bundles, including the Red Hat Linux operating system. A major milestone occurred in 1999 with its initial public offering on the NASDAQ, which was one of the most successful first-day gains for a technology stock at that time. Throughout the early 2000s, it shifted its focus from the consumer-oriented Red Hat Linux to the enterprise-grade Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a move that solidified its position within corporate data centers. The landmark acquisition by IBM, completed in July 2019, marked a significant consolidation within the hybrid cloud and enterprise software market, though it continues to operate as a distinct unit within IBM's Hybrid Cloud & AI division.

Products and services

Its core offering is Red Hat Enterprise Linux, a stable, secure, and supported platform for mission-critical deployments across physical servers, virtual machines, private cloud, and public cloud environments like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. The portfolio expanded significantly with the development and acquisition of key technologies, including the OpenShift platform for container orchestration based on Kubernetes, the Ansible automation platform for IT infrastructure management, and the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform for Java EE applications. Other notable products include Red Hat Satellite for systems management, Red Hat OpenStack Platform for building private clouds, and a suite of middleware, storage, and virtualization solutions.

Business model

The company pioneered a subscription model for open-source software, providing customers with predictable licensing costs, long-term product life cycles, and comprehensive technical support, in contrast to traditional proprietary software perpetual licensing models. This model grants subscribers access to certified software, security updates, patches, documentation, and knowledge base articles, along with direct support from its global support engineers. Revenue is generated primarily from these subscription fees, complemented by consulting, training, and certification services offered through Red Hat Consulting and the Red Hat Training & Certification program, enabling organizations to build internal expertise.

Acquisitions

Its growth strategy has heavily involved strategic acquisitions to expand its technology stack and market reach. A pivotal early acquisition was JBoss in 2006, which brought a leading open-source Java application server into its portfolio. Later significant purchases included Ansible in 2015, which added powerful IT automation capabilities, and CoreOS in 2018, which enhanced its container and Kubernetes offerings integral to the OpenShift platform. Other notable acquisitions over the years include Qumranet (bringing KVM hypervisor technology), Inktank (for Ceph storage), and FuseSource (for integration middleware).

Community and open source involvement

The company is a foundational contributor to numerous major open-source projects and communities, operating under a philosophy of contributing code upstream first. It is a leading corporate contributor to the Linux kernel, the GNOME desktop environment, the GCC compiler collection, and the systemd init system. It also sponsors and leads projects like Fedora Linux, which serves as the upstream community distribution for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and the CentOS project, which provided a free, community-supported rebuild of its enterprise platform. Through the Red Hat Open Source Program Office, it actively participates in foundations like the Linux Foundation, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and the Apache Software Foundation.

Corporate affairs

Its global headquarters are located in Raleigh, North Carolina, within the Research Triangle Park area, with numerous offices worldwide including major sites in Boston, San Francisco, and Brno. The company fosters a distinct corporate culture often associated with the open-source movement, emphasizing principles like transparency, collaboration, and meritocracy, as outlined in its published The Open Organization philosophy. It is consistently recognized on lists such as the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For and is involved in various corporate social responsibility initiatives through the Red Hat Corporate Social Responsibility program, focusing on education, community, and sustainability.

Category:Software companies of the United States Category:Open-source companies Category:Companies based in Raleigh, North Carolina