IBM Declares Red Hat Acquisition “Completely Changing The Cloud Landscape” Articles about top cloud computing providers often contrast Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), which is the dominant frontrunner in this space, and is constantly chasing down by top competitors Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform. IBM claims that Red Hat Inc.’s acquisition is changing all of this. Red Hat and IBM said that the acquisition will transform the hybrid cloud market. This typically involves on-premises implementations and private and public clouds. Ginni Rometty (IBM chairman, president, and CEO) stated that the acquisition of Red Hat was a game-changer. It will change everything about the cloud market. IBM will be the #1 hybrid cloud provider in the world, providing companies with the only open cloud solution that unlocks the full potential of the cloud to their businesses. Arvind Krishna (IBM’s SVP of Hybrid Cloud), reiterated that his company will be the world’s largest hybrid cloud provider in a conference call. He stated that IBM’s goal is to win in hybrid cloud and win on open technologies. In the end, he hopes to provide a technology that will make life easier for companies with less complexity and future proof investment. Red Hat is well-known for its open source offerings — mainly RHEL Linux distribution — as well as work in the Java ecosystem. However, Paul Cormier, a company executive, also spoke about the cloud implications during the conference call. “Our customers see open hybrid cloud as the best way to bring public clouds into their IT infrastructures, and because we are small, we don’t recognize the potential of that demand,” Cormier was quoted as saying in an ADTMag article written by John K. Waters. “IBM helps bring that strategy to 170 nations and accelerates the realization of our vision in the market.” Other media outlets saw the move as an attack on AWS’s cloud leadership.