Red Hat Hires Operations Manager Away from EMC

Published: Octoner 24, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Seeking to bolster its executive suite further, commercial Linux distributor Red Hat said last week that it has hired Nicholas Van Wyk to take over as vice president of operations, a newly created position at the company.

Van Wyk comes to Red Hat from disk maker and, increasingly, software player EMC, where he was vice president of worldwide channel operations of EMC's combined software division, which includes the Documentum content management and the Legato tape backup product lines. (But not the VMware server and workstation virtualization software line, which is run as a hands-off subsidiary by EMC that has its own sales, marketing, and research.) Prior to EMC's acquiring Legato Systems back in July 2003 for $1.3 billion in stock, Van Wyk was vice president of worldwide sales for Legato.

In his new position at Red Hat, Van Wyk will be responsible for analyzing Red Hat's current subscription sales model and how it relates to sales into Red Hat's channel. Red Hat has about 500 channel partners that peddle its various products these days, and with the addition of JBoss, which sold more directly, Red Hat has to take learning from both itself and JBoss as well as other trends in the IT industry to make sure its pricing and packaging make sense.

Van Wyk will report to Joanne Rohde, executive vice president of Red Hat's global operations. "Red Hat's subscription model combined with a pure open source methodology has proven to be one of the strongest combinations for customer success in technology over the last few years," explained Rohde in a statement accompanying Van Wyk's appointment. "Our resolve to optimize to better suit the needs of customers and partners has never been stronger. This resolve is demonstrated today with the creation of a new role and hiring of Nick. His experience working with enterprise partners and customers makes him the perfect fit for this role."