Industry News

“[Layoffs are] a healthy thing that you have to do every once in awhile to make sure you’re putting investment in the right areas that are going to help you keep being successful with customers,” Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks tells CRN.

By Mark Haranas

Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks sat down with CRN to discuss the company’s recent layoff round, whether any more pieces of Red Hat will be absorbed by IBM, and avoiding cloud lock-ins when it comes to Red Hat’s open hybrid cloud strategy.

Hicks became president and CEO of Red Hat in July and is approaching his eighteenth year with the Raleigh, N.C.-based open-source software superstar.

“When I started [in the CEO role], the thing I really wanted to correct is: know why we’re here, known what we do, be excited about what we do,” Hicks told CRN. “We can’t chase every single battle challenge in technology that’s out there. We’ve got to be laser-focused on that.”

Before jumping into what Hicks had to say about Red Hat laying off about 800 employees and IBM becoming “more comfortable” with open source, it is key to note that the 2023 Red Hat Summit is wrapping up today in Boston with an estimated 5,000 people in attendance.

[Related: Red Hat CEO: Partners Have ‘A Ton Of Value-Add’ Around AI]

Red Hat Summit 2023

Thousands of partners, developers and customers flocked to the Boston Convention Center this week for Red Hat Summit 2023 where the company unveiled a slew of new innovations.

Some of Red Hat’s biggest product announcements at the conference include Ansible Lightspeed with IBM Watson Code Assistant, a new generative artificial intelligence (AI) service for Red Hat’s Ansible automation offering. Red Hat also unveiled a new Developer Hub portal that will provide curated tools, languages and resources to boost applications and reduce friction across environments such as Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift.

“Red Hat is really focused on RHEL, Ansible and OpenShift, and consolidating what they’re going to market with, which is helping us focus on where we invest resources,” said Andrew Tenaglia, vice president of app modernization at Red Hat partner Converge Technology Solutions. “We’re seeing more investment from them and have more recourses to help us have these co-created solutions with them around the automation stack.”

In an interview with CRN, CEO Hicks talks about Red Hat’s recent layoffs, whether IBM will absorb any other Red Hat businesses as it did with storage last year, where Red Hat plays in AI, and the company’s market differentiation when it comes to open cloud computing technologies.

Click here to keep reading at CRN.

IBM’s will join the Presto Foundation and aid in the development of PrestoDB.

By Anirban Ghoshal

IBM has acquired Ahana, a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based provider of PrestoDB, for an undisclosed sum.

PrestoDB, or Presto, is an open source, distributed SQL query engine created at Facebook (now Meta) that is tailored for ad hoc analytics against data of all sizes.

Kyndryl’s Harish Grama on steps businesses can take to start their IT modernization journey.

By Kyndryl

Rising interest rates, nagging inflation and banking challenges have many business leaders on edge. It’s little wonder, then, that in times of economic uncertainty businesses seek to cut expenses and refrain from investing. But the companies that aim to get stronger know the importance of spending strategically. 

Advancing women in leadership is not a formal business priority for the majority of organizations surveyed, but there is a roadmap for sustainable progress

By IBM Corporation

The leadership pipeline for women has hollowed out in the middle, according to a new global study "Women in leadership: Why perception outpaces the pipeline—and what to do about it" from the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) and Chief.

With the new update, we are thrilled to announce the release of our latest software version, which marks a significant Milestone in our ongoing mission to provide cutting-edge solutions to our users. This new release has incorporated numerous improvements and features that will make our software even more powerful, intuitive, and user-friendly.

By Remain Software

Today Remain Software is pleased to announce the new Milestone of TD/OMS V15 and MiWorkplace V1.32.0, Gravity V8MS2, and OCTO 1.0.2, in line with the company's commitment to innovation and support. Today's releases feature new integrations and improvements to the user interfaces.

An overview of the latest exciting news and direction from the IBM Power team.

By IBM Corporation

A recent blinded internal survey of IBM Power client CIOs, CTOs, IT directors, IT admins and developers tells us that their top business strategies revolve around improving business processes in real-time—using technology in more innovative ways to gain a competitive advantage and better secure their information. [1] Other major objectives include ensuring superior total cost of ownership, improving the performance of their systems, increasing automation for more productivity and enhancing the energy efficiency of data centers.

As global respondents look to change jobs in the next 12 months, awareness of career and training options is low

To tackle these misconceptions and bring STEM education closer to underrepresented communities, IBM is adding 45 IBM SkillsBuild collaborations around the world

By IBM Corporation

Job seekers, students, and career changers around the world want to pursue roles related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) across different industries, but say they are not familiar with career options. At the same time, online training and digital credentials are emerging as a recognized pathway to opportunity as respondents plan to seek new jobs in the year ahead.

The acquisition adds new ability to provide skilled IBM Power Systems IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) developers to global customers in flexible and fractional engagement models. 

By Fresche Solutions

Fresche Solutions is pleased to announce the acquisition of Silveredge Consulting, a premier IT consulting services provider specializing in IBM i (AS/400, iSeries) application support, ERP and homegrown application development and help desk services.