IBM Completes Red Hat Acquisition

This post was originally published on 31st October 2018 as “IBM Buys Red Hat”. The content has subsequently been updated following the completion of the IBM acquisition.

Probably the biggest talking point this week is the announcement that IBM intends to buy Red Hat Inc, purveyor of the open source Red Hat operating system and an entire ecosystem of products around it. The acquisition is interesting, firstly because of the attention it has garnered, but also for the implications to public cloud, open source and IBM’s business model. IBM is buying into the hybrid cloud model by bringing skills from Red Hat, while also attempting to demonstrate credibility to the market.

IBM of Old

The question is, can IBM manage it? I expect the news was met with a global collective groan and WTF moment, as IT specialists all around the globe try to imagine IBM’s highly corporate business model trying to align with a much more dynamic approach from Red Hat.

Note: IBM completed the Red Hat acquisition on 9 July 2019. The company has indicated that Red Hat will continue as a separate entity and retain existing partnerships, even where they conflict with other IBM businesses like IBM Cloud.

Everyone has an Opinion

Earlier this week I caught up with Martin Glassborow and Chris Mellor. We recorded a quick 10-minute podcast, asking questions, perhaps rather than answering them, on what this acquisition means. We specifically thought about storage, where as Martin points out, IBM has a product for every day of the week.

Have a listen and by all means give us your opinion. We are probably as bemused as everyone else.

Examining IBM’s storage portfolio, there will be lots of confusion and overlap with the Red Hat storage offerings. How will the sales process work in practice, with IBM keen to increase hardware and software sales, while Red Hat looks to push solutions like Ceph? We discussed the issues on a recent Storage Unpacked podcast.

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