Dive Brief:
- Red Hat named Jim Palermo, former VP of Digital Solutions Delivery (DSD), its new VP and CIO, the company said Wednesday as it announced a slate of C-suite changes.
- The company also announced Wednesday Carolyn Nash will become the new SVP and COO, and Robert Leibrock will take the role of SVP and CFO. Leibrock joins the firm from parent company IBM, where he most recently served as assistant controller and played key roles in IBM's 2019 acquisition of Red Hat.
- In the new role, Palermo will "help drive alignment within Red Hat’s internal systems and environments," he said in the announcement. He will report to Nash.
Dive Insight:
IBM's 2019 acquisition of Red Hat was billed as a $34 billion play to accelerate IBM's hybrid cloud strategy through the use of open source technology. A few years later, the assumptions around hybrid cloud usage growth have held true.
For IBM, hybrid cloud has delivered revenue growth, with cash coming in from other large providers in the form of enterprise partnerships.
"Our strategic partnerships also contributed to our performance in the quarter," said Jim Kavanaugh, SVP and CFO at IBM, speaking during the company's Q2 earnings call in July, for the period ending June 30. "Revenue from these partnerships continues to grow solid double digits, led by Azure, AWS and SAP, and Salesforce."
The new slate of leaders at Red Hat will support the company as it adapts to "dynamic market conditions," said Matt Hicks, president and chief executive officer, Red Hat, in the announcement.
“As Red Hat evolves to meet our customers wherever and however they operate across the open hybrid cloud, we need every aspect of our business, from engineering and product development to corporate functions like IT and finance, to perform at the highest possible level," Hicks said.
