From a Sewing Room to a $34 B IBM Deal: The Rise of Red Hat

Today, a shocking IT industry news: IBM acquires Red Hat for $34 billion, marking the end of one era and the start of another.

Let’s review Red Hat’s history.

1969 Ken Thompson at Bell Labs wrote the first version of Unix.

Without Unix there would be no Linux, and without Linux there would be no Red Hat.

Thompson and Ritchie at AT&T

1979 AT&T begins commercializing Unix.

Version Unix 7

1983 Richard Stallman creates the GNU project, establishing the free‑software foundation and copyleft licensing.

Richard Stallman

1989 Michael Tiemann co‑founds Cygnus Solutions, the first company offering support for free open‑source software; later becomes Red Hat CTO.

Red Hat CTO Michael Tiemann

1991 Linus Torvalds releases the Linux kernel and joins the New York Unix Users Group.

Linus Torvalds

1993 Bob Young and ACC Group start selling Linux/Unix accessories and launch New York Unix magazine; the company began in Young’s wife’s sewing room.

1995 Bob Young buys Ewing’s shares, merges with ACC, and names the new company Red Hat Software.

Red Hat releases Linux 2.0 and introduces the RPM package manager.

Red Hat’s first order

1999 Red Hat goes public, becoming the eighth‑largest IPO on Wall Street on its first day.

Red Hat listed on NYSE

2001 Red Hat launches Red Hat Linux Advanced Server with support from Dell, IBM, HP, Oracle, and VERITAS.

2003 Red Hat establishes the Red Hat Academy, offering RHCE courses worldwide, and achieves its first profit.

RHCE certification

2006 Red Hat acquires JBoss, expanding its portfolio beyond Linux.

JBoss by Red Hat

2011 Red Hat acquires Gluster, entering the storage market.

2014 Red Hat releases Enterprise Linux 7 and sponsors CentOS, integrating the community distribution.

2015 Microsoft and Red Hat become strategic partners, offering Red Hat solutions on Azure.

2015 Red Hat acquires Ansible for $150 million, strengthening its IT automation and DevOps capabilities.

2018 Red Hat buys CoreOS for $250 million, expanding its container and Kubernetes portfolio.

In October 2018, IBM announced a cash acquisition of Red Hat at $190 per share, valuing the deal at about $34 billion. After the acquisition, Red Hat will operate as an independent unit within IBM’s hybrid‑cloud team, preserving its open‑source development tradition, product portfolio, market strategy, and culture.

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst with IBM CEO Ginni Rometty

Over more than 20 years, Red Hat grew from a sewing‑room startup to a skyscraper‑size enterprise, culminating in a $34 billion sale that created a legend in the open‑source software world.

Source: 特大号