>> Narrator: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston,
connecting with thought leaders all around the world,
this is a CUBE Conversation.
>> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and welcome
to a special CUBE Conversation.
We've been talking to leaders around the industry
about how they are helping their organizations
and their customers in these challenging times
with COVID-19.
Really happy to bring back to the program
one of our CUBE Alumni,
he also has a new title, Paul Cormier
is now the President and CEO of Red Hat.
Paul, it is great to see you.
We live geographically not too far apart.
Normally we would be getting together in person for Summit.
Of course, that event's happening digitally,
but thanks so much for joining us.
>> My pleasure Stu, always a pleasure with you guys.
>> All right so, Paul you have
a storied history at Red Hat.
I've sat through many keynotes
where you walk through the product and portfolio,
looked at the acquisitions,
looked at the strategic direction moves.
Taking the new job as CEO
is a big move in regular times.
Of course, we're not in regular times,
we're in rather unique times here.
So let's start there, what does it mean
about coming into this new role
in the times that we are facing?
>> You know, as I see it considering the times here,
I think it's probably one of the biggest decisions
I've made in my career to take on this new job,
only because, already as you know Stu,
we've talked a lot.
I've been here from certainly the beginning of our move
to the enterprise and 19 years, it was probably 120 or so,
and I actually think we've brought such a big
value to our customers.
I think our customers are actually going to see
even more value as we come out of this because,
than they have had in the past.
For one thing, with the combination of IBM,
we're able to reach a wider set of customers out there
that we can bring into the Linux world
where all the innovation's happening.
So I think our customers,
we've treated this, our product line,
as an enterprise-based product line
since the beginning, since day one.
We're literally helping our customers
keep their businesses running at this point
on our product lines because of everything we've done
to make them enterprise-class.
>> So, Paul, some previous challenges in my career,
you talk about whether financial,
whether it is natural disasters
or 9/11, the technical industry
needs to kind of rally together.
But one of the things that is different about this
is the impact it has on every employee.
I wasn't surprised to see the letter that you sent out
to all of the associates was posted on the Red Hat site,
it didn't need to be leaked or anything like that,
so the transparency always is appreciated.
But bring us inside a little bit the organization.
How are you helping your employees
and making sure that they can deal
with all the personal things that they need to deal with
while still being there for your customers?
>> Sure, well, first of all one of the things is
we're sort of used to working remotely when the need arises
and even full-time for that case.
A big percentage of our associates are,
work remotely 100% of the time.
We've always had the philosophy in that we,
especially in engineering,
where we go after the best possible talent.
And the unique part of being 100% opensource-focused
is that our engineers know the other engineers
that are working in our communities.
Whether they know them, if they've met face-to-face,
they certainly know them very well on a professional level.
So a lot of our people, we're used to working remotely.
The other thing is most of Red Hat is type A
personality-type people.
So that's a good thing on some days
and maybe a tough thing on some other days.
But what that means is
everybody works from home in some period,
whether it's they go to the office all day
and then wake up at midnight and do some more
or whether it's a Saturday or Sunday,
we're all pretty much set up to do that.
So our IT department has been fabulous through this.
We've had a gazillion more hours of both VPN
and video hours and it's just all worked,
but they've had a great test bed for all these years.
So from that standpoint, from that technical standpoint,
it's worked very well.
From the employees' standpoint,
we've really picked up the video,
all-hands video conferencing from once a quarter
to every two weeks, and so,
I had an all-hands meeting two days ago, three days ago,
when I was announced on my new role
and I committed to them
we're going to have an all-hands every two weeks.
Come and talk, we'll give you the updates, et cetera.
So I think that's one thing, you can't over-communicate
that I'm like this.
And I think the third thing that,
I guess I'd like to say my former Products Groups now,
but you know I still love those guys.
My former group, the Products Group,
they actually had a very great idea.
They're holding virtual office hours
for their colleges in the field once a week,
and we're actually holding once in the morning,
once later at night for the people in Asia Pacific,
actual hours with the product managers
and the engineers, et cetera,
getting on with video conference that integrate
and talk with the folks out in the field about
what we're doing in the products and what's going on
and what's upcoming and hear their issues as well.
I think this serves as two things.
The first thing it serves of, certainty,
it keeps people engaged, but secondly,
our people love the technology.
And so to some extent, with everything going on around COVID
and how serious it is in every country,
it almost gives our people almost an escape from that
to really spend an hour or two a day on this
and just really have conversations with each other
about the business and the products, and the technology.
So that's become a really big hit inside as well.
>> Yeah, there are definitely some things
that just get amplified.
You talked about, we're used to being able
to be on or join meetings regardless of the time of day.
I'm sure you're team, plenty of blue jeans and Zoom
meetings before this, but it has taken
a slightly different tone now
with, you've now got everybody at home
and managing other personal relationships and things
that are happening on the outside.
You're still holding Red Hat Summit at the end of April.
I think there's a real strong push from your team
to balance and make sure
that you're there for your customers,
but it's not going to be as much of the hoopla.
There's not the swag and the announcements
that are going on.
Why is it still important to still bring the community
together and meet with your partners
and customers rather than push it off to later this year?
>> It's a great question.
I said in my note that when I stand up on stage
for my keynote at the summit every year,
even though I'm so many year,
I don't even know how many summits, 13, 14,
something like that, it's such a rush
because I really do stand there.
Jim talked about this on our internal hand-off
where he said, "Remember Paul and I in a ballroom
"at one of the first summits at some hotel?"
We looked behind the curtain and I said to him,
wow, there's 300 people out there.
And last year in Boston, I looked out and said,
wow, there's 10,000 people here.
It's amazing, so it really started as a way
to really talk to and interact with both our customers
and our community as well, but it turned into a celebration.
And not just a celebration of internal Red Hat people,
a celebration of the whole ecosystem
and partners and customers and upstream people
of how far open source and Linux has come.
And we didn't think that celebration part this year
was really appropriate considering where we work,
but we all still have a job to do,
we're all doing 'em remotely.
And as I said, we're running
many of our customers' business,
so we felt it was really important to put this out there
to have our customers understand
where we're going in the coming year,
some of the new products we have coming,
and how we can help them.
And so that's really more of the tone this year
and we feel that's still important.
We all have a big job right now,
and coming out of this we're even going to have
all bigger jobs and how we re-entry
into this and balance that.
So that's really the focus this year,
how we can continue to help with the technology we brought
to the enterprise for the last 19 years.
>> Yeah, Paul, the last question I have for you,
I think back the summit last year,
Satya Nedella was on stage,
Ginni Rometty was up on stage.
Of course, Red Hat tightly tied into a broad community
and ecosystem network out there.
So as the leader of Red Hat, how are you in contact
and working with the communities and the partner ecosystem
to both manage through and be ready
for the other side of what we're facing today?
>> In one regard, especially with many,
it's almost more at this point.
The partners and the ecosystems are really important.
Many of the partners, especially the smaller partners,
they look to us for leadership.
So we still have communication with them,
and partly the summit is for them as well.
So some of the larger partners, like that you mentioned,
Microsoft and certainty IBM and Amazon and Google
and others, we actually communicate almost more
now that we're all working from home
because, as I said earlier,
the same goes outside as it does inside.
You just can't over-communicate in this environment.
And now, as you know, Stu, the tech industry
looks like this giant industry
but it really is kind of a small industry
and a lot of us know each other from many years,
and so that communication is going on.
We're comparing notes.
Actually, in many cases, we're comparing notes
maybe even more than we might have in the past.
So what are you guys doing at your company
to plan for this just,
and I've actually seen some of the partners
who focus in proprietary technologies
even become a bit more open on those discussions now.
So I think, maybe that could be,
if there's any good outcome of this,
that could be one of the outcomes that's slightly positive.
>> All right, well, Paul, thank you so much for the updates.
Congratulations on your new role,
we absolutely are looking forward to the summit
at the end of the month.
>> Thanks again, always great to see you, Stu.
Thanks very much.
>> All right, be sure to check out theCUBE.net
where you can see the preview of Red Hat Summit
as well as the guests we will have there.
We will have Paul, Stephanie, Matt Hicks,
lots of the Red Hat executives,
their customers and partners.
I'm Stu Miniman, and thank you for watching theCUBE.
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