IBM and Red Hat today announced the closing the transaction whereby IBM acquired all issued and outstanding common stock of Red Hat for $ 190,00 per share in cash, for a total equity value of approximately $ 34 billion.
Red Hat's open source hybrid cloud technologies are now paired with IBM's unmatched breadth and depth of innovation and industry experience, and sales leadership in over 175 countries.
Together, IBM and Red Hat will accelerate innovation by delivering a next-generation hybrid multicloud platform.
Based on open source technologies, such as Linux and Kubernets, the platform will allow companies to securely distribute, run and manage data and applications locally and on private and multiple public clouds. IBM Red Hat "Businesses are starting the next chapter of their digital reinventions, modernizing infrastructure and moving mission-critical workloads through private clouds and multiple clouds from multiple vendors“Said Ginni Rometty, president, president and CEO of IBM. "They need open and flexible technology to manage these hybrid multicloud environments. And they need partners they can trust to manage and protect these systems. IBM and Red Hat are well suited to meet these needs. As the leading hybrid cloud provider, we will help clients build the technology foundation of their business for decades to come".
The partnership between IBM and Red Hat has spanned 20 years, with IBM as a prime supporter of Linux, partnering with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux, and most recently to bring enterprise Kubernets and hybrid cloud solutions to customers. . These innovations have become key technologies within IBM's $ 19 billion hybrid cloud business. Between them, IBM and Red Hat have contributed more to the open source community than any other organization.
“Today's announcement is the evolution of our long-standing partnership,” Rometty said. "This includes our joint Hybrid Cloud collaboration announcement in May, a key precursor on our journey to date." With this acquisition, IBM will remain committed to Red Hat's open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread development ecosystem. Furthermore, IBM and Red Hat will remain committed to the continued freedom of open source, through efforts such as Patent Promise, GPL Cooperation Commitment, Open Invention Network and LOT Network. IBM and Red Hat will also continue to build and enhance partnerships with Red Hat, including those with leading cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and more, as well as IBM Cloud. At the same time, Red Hat will benefit from IBM's hybrid cloud and enterprise IT scale to help expand its open source technology portfolio to businesses around the world. "IBM is committed to being a true multi-cloud provider, and we will prioritize the use of Red Hat technology across multiple clouds," said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, IBM Hybrid Cloud.
"In this way, IBM will support open source technology wherever it is used, enabling it to scale significantly within commercial environments around the world." Upon closing of the acquisition, Red Hat will join IBM's Hybrid Cloud team as a separate unit, preserving the independence and neutrality of Red Hat's open source development heritage and commitment, current product portfolio and strategy go -to-market, and the unique culture of development. Red Hat will continue to be led by Jim Whitehurst and the current Red Hat management team. Jim Whitehurst will also join IBM's senior management team and report to Ginni Rometty.
IBM intends to retain Red Hat's headquarters, facilities, brands and practices. "IBM's commitment to maintaining the things that made Red Hat a success - always with the customer and the open source community in mind first - make this a great opportunity not only for Red Hat, but also open source in a broad sense, ”said Paul Cormier, president, Products and Technologies, Red Hat.
"From the day we decided to bring open source to the enterprise, our mission has remained unchanged. And now, one of the largest tech companies on the planet has agreed to partner with us to scale and accelerate our efforts, bringing open source innovation to an even wider range of the enterprise.".
