February 07, 2008, 4:13 PM — When Matthew Szulik left Red
Hat abruptly for family health reasons in December, many people were scratching
their heads over the company's new choice of CEO -- a young executive from Delta
Airlines, Jim Whitehurst. But Whitehurst's chief operating officer title at
Delta and position outside of the technology industry are misleading; a peek
into his past reveals a computer science degree and a passion for open-source
technology, not to mention a smooth operator who helped bring a struggling airline
out of bankruptcy.
Still, Whitehurst, 40, has big shoes to fill in replacing Szulik, the man who
took a small, unknown company and turned it into a savvy business competitor
that made Linux a household name and struck fear in the hearts of much bigger
rivals like Microsoft. Today, Red Hat is the leading Linux vendor and is financially
sound, but the company is in a pivotal phase of reinventing itself as a broader
open-source software provider and a multibillion-dollar technology leader that
can compete long-term with much larger companies.
Whitehurst spoke with IDG News Service this week about the key findings of
his first month on the job and where he thinks Red Hat should focus its attention
to evolve at a sustainable pace. This is an edited version of that interview.
IDGNS: I was surprised to find out that you have a computer science
background when I heard you came to Red Hat as COO from Delta Airlines. I didn’t
expect you to be such a techie.
Whitehurst: I do have geek cred. For some reason, your reputation is
always based on your prior experience. When I was at the airline, people said,
"Who is this strategy consultant running an airline?" Now I'm an airline
guy running a technology company. I wish I was called an airline guy when I
was at the airline!
IDGNS: Was this a personal interest in open source that led you to Red
Hat? Was Delta a big user of Linux?
Whitehurst: Delta certainly uses some REL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux)
and JBoss, but it's more of a personal interest. I was hacking around with Slackware,
one of the early Linuxes that was out there in the '90s, and an early adopter
and user of Fedora all the way through when I got the call for joining Red Hat.
It's always been a passion of mine, so the opportunity to get out there to lead
is an extraordinary privilege and honor for me.
IDGNS: Red Hat is currently in a great position as leader of the Linux
market and has been doing well financially, but the company has been called
upon by Wall Street to grow and possibly diversify the business. When you look
at the company, what are its biggest challenges right now?
Whitehurst: Let me start off by saying I've only been here a few weeks.
The first month [has basically been] going out on the road with customers, employees,
with investors, with analysts, with our partners-slash-competitors and really
trying to get a sense of the business, what’s working well and what’s
not. The good news is, most things are working well -- from the standpoint of
being a very healthy business growing rapidly with healthy financials.
I think you’re right there are certainly areas where we can do a better
job. First off, I would just say the general organizational focus. We actually
do a lot of different things, support a lot of different projects. We have to
be careful that we’re focusing on the right things and putting our investment
dollars where they’ll have the most impact. I'm still going through the
details of what we do and what we don't do, so stay tuned on that.
A second area where there’s still a lot of opportunity for Red Hat would
be basically [in] processes and systems, including IT systems and governance,
especially for a company that's grown so rapidly. A lot of those processes and
systems and ways of doing business are different for a company like Red Hat
that's [US]$500 million on its way to a multibillion-dollar company than they
are for a small company. Some time and attention on basic execution to make
sure we have the processes and systems in place to grow, and grow healthily,
are another area where I plan to spend a fair amount of time.
IDGNS: And what about your experience makes you well-suited to help
meet those challenges and diversify Red Hat's products beyond Linux into more
of a full open-source software provider?
