By Bob Liu, InternetNews.com
Red Hat Inc. on Thursday promoted its vice president of
operations, Kevin Thompson, to the position of Chief Financial
Officer.
The announcement comes on the same day that Red Hat will hold
its first-ever analyst’s day where the company is expected to
outline its business strategy to achieve 80% revenue growth and
profitability by its mid-2001 target.
Also at today’s analyst meeting, the company is expected to
detail and demonstrate its Red Hat Network platform, which is
becoming the cornerstone of Red Hat’s value-added Web-based
services offering to manage network infrastructure. Red Hat
recently unveiled Red Hat Network, an Internet-based service for
deploying and managing open source platforms through its redhat.com
portal. Red Hat Network offers services such as customizable update
management, security evaluation and notification, and technical
support to individuals, enterprise customers and Internet appliance
developers.
Thompson, who joined Red Hat last month, is a former partner at
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where he has more than 13 years of
experience managing operations, financial transactions such as debt
and equity offerings, and mergers and acquisitions.
“In just a short time it was compellingly clear that Kevin had
the skills, experience and enthusiasm to assume the operational
helm as CFO,” said Matthew Szulik, president and CEO of Red Hat.
“Kevin brings tremendous experience with global finance to Red
Hat’s executive team and is an enormous asset to our rapidly
growing company.”
Thompson formerly served as a partner in the Global Technology
Industry Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, where he directed
stock offerings and oversaw mergers and acquisitions at public and
private technology companies. Prior to his position at
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Thompson served as a senior manager for
Arthur Andersen LLP for 10 years, overseeing public offerings and
directing projects for multi-national companies in North America,
Latin American and Southeast Asia. Thompson is a Certified Public
Accountant and holds a bachelor of science degree in business
administration with highest honors from the University of
Oklahoma.
“In the time I have been involved with Red Hat, I have become
convinced of Red Hat’s ability to revolutionize the software
industry,” said Thompson. “As Red Hat’s CFO, I am confident that
Red Hat is on track to meet the goals we’ve communicated to the
public markets–improved gross margins, continued 100 percent
revenue growth and profitability by the end of calendar year
2001.”
Separately, Red Hat announced that it has joined forces with
Clover Technologies Pvt. Limited to open Red Hat India Pvt.
Limited. This joint venture will deliver Red Hat software, support
and services to customers in India.