Red Hat made open source safe for the enterprise: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, OpenShift, and Ansible are the commercially supported spine of Linux estates, container platforms, and automation worldwide.
Red Hat training runs in Red Education's Australasia catalogue and through its course finder, extending the portfolio from network and security appliances to the operating system and automation layer beneath them.
Founded in 1993 and profitable on a business model skeptics said could not exist - selling support for software anyone could copy - Red Hat proved the open-source enterprise thesis, a story this site's glossary tells through The Cathedral and the Bazaar. IBM acquired it in July 2019 for 34 billion dollars, then the largest software acquisition ever, and runs it as a distinct unit.
Founding stories
Red Hat
Marc Ewing built his Linux distribution in 1994 and named it for the red Cornell lacrosse cap he wore; Bob Young was selling Linux CDs out of a catalog business and knew distribution when he saw it. Their 1995 merger incorporated Red Hat Software around a heretical idea: give the software away and sell the trust - packaging, updates, certification, support. The August 1999 IPO, one of the wildest first days of the dot-com era, put a market price on that idea; the 2002 pivot to Red Hat Enterprise Linux perfected it. Subscriptions to open source became a business the size of a software giant - which is exactly what eventually bought it.
The timeline
- Red Hat Linux ships
Ewing's distribution arrives with RPM package management on the way - Linux made installable for people with jobs; Young's merger incorporates Red Hat Software the following year.
- The IPO heard round the Valley
The August listing rockets on day one - open source arrives on Wall Street, with Red Hat as the proof that free software could carry a ticker.
- RHEL: the model perfected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux splits the stable, certified, subscription product from the fast-moving community stream - Fedora, from 2003 - creating the template every open-source business since has studied.
- Up the stack: JBoss
The JBoss acquisition adds middleware; Ansible (2015) later adds automation and CoreOS (2018) adds container-Linux DNA - each one widening subscriptions beyond the operating system.
- IBM: $34 billion
IBM completes the acquisition on July 9, 2019 - then the largest software deal in history - buying OpenShift's hybrid-cloud position as much as RHEL, with Red Hat kept deliberately semi-autonomous. Matt Hicks takes the CEO chair in 2022.
- CentOS Stream
The December announcement moves CentOS from downstream rebuild to upstream Stream - controversial with rebuilders, clarifying for the RHEL business, and the spark for a new generation of downstream distributions.
Flagship products and solutions
- Red Hat Enterprise LinuxThe operating system of enterprise open source - the subscription, certification ecosystem, and ten-year lifecycles the model is built on.
- OpenShiftThe Kubernetes platform - the hybrid-cloud centerpiece that motivated the IBM deal.
- Ansible Automation PlatformThe automation lingua franca - and the configuration language behind a fair share of the network world's tooling, this site's audience included.
Key innovations
- The open-source business modelRHEL's subscription-and-certification structure proved free software could fund an enterprise vendor - the template for every commercial open-source company after it.
- RPM and the distribution craftPackage management, dependency resolution, and the release-engineering discipline Red Hat built became the substrate of enterprise Linux itself.
Main markets
Inside IBM since 2019 but run as the open-source standard-bearer: RHEL and OpenShift anchor hybrid cloud across essentially every industry, against Canonical, SUSE, and the hyperscalers' own stacks.
Analyst standing
- The reference vendor of enterprise Linux and a Leader in the container-platform evaluations - the rare company whose product names are also category names.
Red Education recognition
- Cybersecurity Excellence Awards 2025 - Best Cybersecurity Education Provider
- Cybersecurity Excellence Awards 2025 - Best Cybersecurity Certification Training
- Cybersecurity Excellence Awards 2025 - Cybersecurity Instructor Team of the Year
- 100,000+ students trained across 132 countries; 4.9-star average from 5,000+ reviews