Red Hat Aims To Be The Default Choice For Next-Generation IT

11/05/2018

By Peter High. Published in Forbes.

On October 28, IBM announced its intent to acquire Red Hat for $34 billion. This marked the largest software acquisition ever. Prior to announcement, I caught up with Red Hat Chief Information Officer Mike Kelly, who offered thoughts on the steps his team had undertaken to continue to improve Red Hat’s product (using a Red Hat-on-Red Hat program), to advise technology executives at various stages of leveraging open source technology, and in improving the overall operation. Clearly these are the sorts of improvements that helped make the company attractive to IBM.

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Peter High: Could you describe your purview as the Chief Information Officer of Red Hat?

Mike Kelly: I am part of our executive team, and I have a variety of responsibilities relating to IT at Red Hat. The responsibilities are as follows:

• The enterprise applications that we use to run the company and drive process improvement and application modernization for all our lines of business;
• Our infrastructure, enterprise architecture, and DevOps organization – we have applications running in our data center, which is where I include our enterprise architecture function and our new custom app development;
• Our associate experience, which includes all that we do to leverage technology as effectively as possible so they can do their jobs;
• Our Information Security and Risk Management. These departments are responsible for keeping Red Hat secure and report to me;
• Our enterprise data and analytics function, which similar to many companies, is working to make sure we are leveraging data as effectively as possible to make those data driven decisions across the company;
• Our strategy enablement function, which is oriented around how we represent our IT organizations internally and externally. This function is where our Red Hat-on-Red Hat program lives, and it is where all of our associate development lives as well. As we look at the types of people we need in IT both now and in the future, we are laser focused on how we provide the best opportunities for our people;
• Our Captive Development Center in India.

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