Red Hat, Inc. is an American software vendor headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina. The company helps organizations deploy and operate IT systems based on open source technologies. Its positioning rests on an operational promise: turning innovations from developer communities into solutions that meet businesses’ requirements for stability, security and maintenance. Its corporate website is redhat.com.
From Linux to becoming part of IBM
Red Hat’s origins date back to 1993. Its development is associated with Bob Young and Marc Ewing, whose activities converged in the mid-1990s around Linux distribution. The vendor subsequently helped establish this operating system in professional environments by offering commercial and technical support rather than a model centered on selling proprietary licenses.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or RHEL, became the foundation of this strategy. The company gradually expanded its portfolio to include infrastructure software, development tools and automation, notably through its acquisition of Ansible in 2015. In 2019, IBM completed its acquisition of Red Hat, which retained its brand and a positioning open to different hardware and cloud providers.
Platforms for operating the hybrid cloud
RHEL provides a foundation for servers, critical applications and public cloud deployments. Subscriptions provide access to updates, support and maintenance commitments, among other benefits. This approach aims to reduce the risks associated with operating software over time while enabling customers to benefit from an ecosystem of certified hardware and applications.
With OpenShift, Red Hat offers an application platform based on Kubernetes and containers. It enables teams to develop, deploy and manage applications on in-house infrastructure or with cloud providers. The offering also includes virtualization capabilities and, with OpenShift AI, tools for artificial intelligence projects. Ansible Automation Platform, for its part, addresses the need to automate configurations, deployments and IT operations.
Training, certification and consulting complement these offerings. Red Hat also maintains ties with community projects such as Fedora, which contribute to the experimentation and maturation of technologies incorporated into its portfolio.
What’s next?
Red Hat’s trajectory is shaped as much by the modernization of existing infrastructure as by new uses of cloud computing and AI. For businesses, the challenge is to allow legacy applications, virtual machines and containers to coexist without multiplying operational tools. The vendor seeks to address this complexity through common platforms and greater automation. Its ability to maintain the trust of open source communities while delivering measurable value to its subscribers will remain crucial as it competes with offerings from major cloud providers and other Linux distributions.