Matt Hicks, the new CEO of Red Hat, does not have the background of a typical business leader.
After studying at university to become a computer engineer, he began his career as a computer consultant at IBM.
Then, instead of going into management at Red Hat, Matt Hicks chose to start in the open source software company in 2006, as a developer within the IT team.
Intuition and communication
According to Matt Hicks, his experience in the field is one of his best assets to lead the company now.
“Markets move very quickly,” he told ZDNet. “And having that intuition – knowing where the hardware is going, having spent time in the field with what enterprise IT stores struggle with and what they do well, and then d Having spent many years in Red Hat engineering – I know that’s a hunch I’m going to build on. (…) Around that, there is a very good team at Red Hat, and I can rely on their expertise on the best way to deliver, but I like having that basic intuition. »
For Matt Hicks, his basic knowledge helps guide business strategies.
If his experience is an asset, Matt Hicks believes that it is not obvious that a good developer makes a good leader. You also need to be able to communicate your ideas convincingly.
“You can’t just be the best coder in the room,” he says. “Especially in STEM and engineering, the softer skills, like learning to present, how to influence a group, and showing up really well in a leadership presentation or at a conference, really start to define people’s careers. »
Finding a good balance
Matt Hicks explains that his power of influence is an important aspect of his current position, which he had not had the opportunity to experience earlier in his career. “I think a lot of people don’t like that,” he says. “And yet you can be the best engineer on the planet and work hard, but if you can’t be heard, if you can’t influence, it’s harder to make those opportunities happen. »
Matt Hicks has embraced the art of persuasion to advance his career. And as a software developer, he learned to embrace enterprise products to advance Red Hat’s mission.
He joined Red Hat just a few years after Paul Cormier — then Red Hat’s vice president of engineering, and later Matt Hicks’ predecessor as CEO — transitioned the company from its first distribution, Red Hat. Linux, to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). This change did not please everyone. “Developers wondered if this was the right business model for open source. People are passionate about creating durable designs. So I think that at the time [la question] was whether Red Hat was deviating from it or whether it would continue to improve open source. »
Matt Hicks understood both camps. “I really started my whole journey with technology with Linux,” he says. “I was on the consumer side – you know, I bought the Linux boxes from Best Buy. But my first professional job was actually a consulting position with IBM at the time. And as much as I knew Linux, there is a difference when you are a consultant in a company and you deploy Linux alongside AIX [le système d’exploitation Unix d’IBM]. »
Matt Hicks says he was drawn to Red Hat because of the inherent tension between community and commerce. “There’s the pull back and forth, how to build a community where the software is accessible to anyone on the planet, your partners and your competitors,” he says, in relation to the question “how to exploit this innovation, to have a successful business model that customers appreciate”.
In all his years at Red Hat, Matt Hicks doesn’t think the challenge of balancing these two forces has changed much.
Hybrid cloud and edge strategy
But much else has changed, both in the software development profession and at Red Hat. Matt Hicks wants to ensure that the company is always ready to evolve.
He feels that the idea of seeking cultural fit among potential employees has a very static side to it. “It’s not that you don’t add anything, you don’t look at the potential,” he says. “If you always stay with what you know, the culture you have today, which adapts to your current constraints, I think you’re going to lose a lot of that potential, both the potential of today today and then when that talent evolves and changes tomorrow. »
Red Hat was acquired by IBM in 2019 for $34 billion, but the company continues to operate as a standalone division. Meanwhile, RHEL is still the industry’s leading enterprise Linux platform. It is used by more than 90% of Fortune 500 organizations and hit $13 trillion in global business revenue in 2022.
The company is focused on supporting “open hybrid cloud,” which enables IT teams to work across public clouds, data centers, and edge computing. “We’re at the intersection of open source potential, open hybrid cloud potential, and software innovation, and that’s what excites me every day,” says Matt Hicks.
As he settles into his new role as CEO, the main challenge that awaits Matt Hicks will be to choose the right industries and the right partners in the field of edge computing. Red Hat is already working in this area, across a whole host of different industries. It notably works with General Motors on Ultifi, General Motors’ end-to-end software platform, and partners with ABB, one of the world leaders in manufacturing automation. It is also working with Verizon on hybrid mobile edge computing.
Much remains to be done, and Red Hat expects edge computing spending to reach approximately $250 billion by 2025. “There will be tremendous application growth,” argues Matt Hicks . “So our short-term goals are to pick the industries and build effective partnerships in those industries, because they’re newer and evolving. »
Source: ZDNet.com