Red Hat aims for corporate mainstream
- Article 10 of 77
- Information Age, May 2001
Red Hat is making real progress and will soon be the first Linux company to enter the corporate mainstream.
Bob Young is an open source revolutionary: he knows what is wrong with the software industry and he wants it changed. “People say to me, 'You're going to drag the software industry into the 21st century.' I'm actually trying to drag it into the 17th century.”
In his mind, customers are still “vassals” of the vendor, to use bygone parlance: once they buy the software, if it does not work properly or they want it customised, “they have to go cap in hand back to the vendor and ask them to change it.”
Young co-founded Red Hat in 1994 after assessing the future of the Unix market. Initially, he was sceptical of open source but, with the rapid expansion of the Linux operating system, he saw an opportunity to sell into enterprises by using open source's unique selling point - the potential for customers to inspect and change program code themselves.
Now chairman of the company, Young says his mission is “to cause technology purchasing officers to add a tick-box to the bottom of the list of requirements that reads 'Do I get control over the technology I'm building?' If they add that box, open source takes over the world,” he says.
Red Hat's ability to fulfil those ambitions was enhanced in early 2001 when IBM decided to standardise on Red Hat software for customers wanting Linux on IBM servers. But Young sees Linux as more ubiquitous still. He expects Linux to make as big an impact in the operating environment for PCs, Internet appliances and mobile phones.
Young has equally broad plans for Red Hat. He has been following a 20-year plan to build the company into a major technology force. And despite ongoing losses, Red Hat is still on course, he says. “Our focus has always been on the serious users. With us, they get all the benefits of open source and a 1-800 number.”