Red Hat not resting on its laurels, hires 'Transformation' executive
You'd think that Red Hat had "transformation" down pat. But the company apparently feels it has room to improve, announcing the appointment of Nick Van Wyk as vice president, global operations and senior transformation executive last week. Nick essentially replaces Joanne Rohde as EVP of global operations. Joanne resigned last week.
I really like and respect Joanne and am sad to see her go. Apparently, Red Hat felt the need to shake things up a bit. Van Wyk's role intrigues me:
Van Wyk is responsible for the execution of all elements of Red Hat's operations, including subscription management, sales operations and channel operations. In addition, Van Wyk will lead a recently developed Transformation Team charged with the development of processes and systems to improve global operating efficiency and performance.
Red Hat, in other words, sees the need to streamline and disrupt itself a bit, even as it roils its competition. This is smart business practice, and it points to Red Hat's understanding that good as it has been, it can do better.
In particular, Red Hat needs to continue fine-tuning its JBoss acquisition. The integration has been choppy at times. There's still a lot of room for improvement. It looks like Red Hat is committed to that improvement.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
