A mega-good match

Paul Cormier, Red Hat's CEO, tells why combining his company's open source software credo with IBM has been a marriage made in heaven.

Published Fri, Jul 24, 2020 · 09:50 PM

IBM

ONE year ago, people who follow closely the world of technology, including this writer, were surprised by a multi-billion-dollar announcement. IBM - the granddaddy of established enterprise software companies, with a more than 100-year track record - announced a deal worth US$34 billion to acquire Red Hat, a leading provider of cloud computing technologies. It was the largest sum ever paid for a software company.

On the face of it, despite the massive size of the deal, it was one company acquiring another for business synergy and scale, which is quite common in the technology industry. So why was it a surprise?

To understand, one needs to delve a bit into the backstory associated with IBM and Red Hat - the so-called conflict between the proprietary software development model and the open sour…