It’s Red Hat, but not as we know it

Software vendor Red Hat is celebrating the launch of Enterprise Linux 8 and the approval of its acquisition by IBM with a change of wardrobe.

As arguably the best known company to be named after an item of clothing, the hat itself is central to Red Hat’s brand and image, so any decision to muck about with it, therefore, is not to be taken lightly. But when incoming CMO Tim Yeaton chatted to people about the logo he was distressed to hear they found the dude wearing the hat to be sinister and even evil.

Showing some of the qualities that presumably lead to his promotion Yeaton quickly concluded that having an ‘evil’ logo was a potential marketing liability and dedicated the next year and a half to resolving the matter in an appropriately open source way. This exhaustive process apparently came to a simple conclusion: ditch the dude, resulting in the dude-less logo you see above.

The evolution of the Red Hat logo coincides with a couple of other pretty significant milestones for the company. Tech giant IBM was recently advised that the US Department of Justice has concluded its review of the Red Hat acquisition and said it’s got no problem with it and as far as the US is concerned this is an unconditional green light. IBM apparently reckons the whole thing will be wrapped up later this year.

Lastly Red Hat recently announced the first major new version of its Enterprise Linux platform – RHEL 8. As a platform designed with datacenters in mind, RHEL is of increasing relevance to telcos as they move ever more of their stuff into the cloud and the edge. Red Hat is positioning RHEL 8 as the platform for the hybrid cloud era and name-dropped lots of other associated buzzwords like containers and devops. We wouldn’t even know which end of the box to open with this stuff, so hopefully this vid as well as some canned quotes will help you understand what the big deal is.

Stefanie Chiras, vice president and general manager, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat

“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 embraces the role of Linux as IT’s innovation engine, crystallizing it into an accessible, trusted and more secure platform. Spanning the entirety of the hybrid cloud, the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform provides a catalyst for IT organizations to do more than simply meet today’s challenges; it gives them the foundation and tools to launch their own future, wherever they want it to be.”

Tibor Incze, technical lead, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Datacom Systems

“The capacity for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 to not only run multiple versions of the same application or database on a specific operating system but to also have a clear and efficient way to manage them is a significant benefit to Datacom and our customers. As we continue to execute on our internal DevOps strategy, we’re also pleased to see improved container capabilities in the operating system and extensive automation, all factors that will help us bring differentiated services to our end users.”

John Gossman, distinguished engineer, Microsoft Azure

“We have seen growth in applications being deployed using Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure, including Microsoft SQL Server, for cloud-native, hybrid, and cloud migration scenarios. We’re excited to see what customers will create with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 on Azure with continued integrated support from Microsoft and Red Hat, as well as the operating system’s new capabilities to build applications for workloads like AI.”

Arlen Shenkman, executive vice president, Global Business Development and Ecosystems, SAP

“Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for SAP Solutions offers high availability capabilities, which are important for SAP workloads, and downtime is unacceptable for business critical applications such as S/4HANA. For more than two decades, we’ve worked with Red Hat on maintaining a stable, open foundation for SAP applications, helping our customers make smarter decisions, faster, across the hybrid cloud.”