RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — (company press release) — Red Hat, Inc., the market leader in open source solutions, announced today the appointment of Michael Tiemann to the position of Chief Technical Officer (CTO). Tiemann was co-founder and acting CTO of Cygnus Solutions, which Red Hat acquired this month. In his new role as CTO of Red Hat, Tiemann will be responsible for communicating Red Hat's strategic direction to the company's customers and ensuring that Red Hat technologies meet their long term business requirements.

Tiemann is replacing Marc Ewing, co-founder and former CTO of Red Hat. Ewing will remain as a member of the board of directors of Red Hat, Inc. as well as serve as a Director for the Red Hat Center for Open Source. The Red Hat Center for Open Source is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the social principles of open source for the greater good of society by funding work in research, technology, law, health and the sciences.

“Marc and his team of strong technical and engineering leaders delivered Red Hat's long history of creating and then sharing real intellectual value,” said Matthew Szulik, CEO of Red Hat. “Michael will continue that leadership as one of the most respected technical leaders and a worldwide evangelist in the open source movement. He brings a strong advocacy for the Red Hat customer base and strategic insight that will enable Red Hat to continue as one of the world's leading open source software companies.”

“In the past year, as Linux and open source have entered the mainstream of computing, Red Hat has been a leader in making this happen through its strong, committed software engineering group and its management-level commitment to the open source development model,” said Tiemann. “I look forward to helping Red Hat further accelerate the adoption and application of open source technologies in the enterprise and post-PC markets.”

During the past ten years at Cygnus, Michael has participated in a number of roles, ranging from President (from 1989-1995), Director of Business Development (1995-1996), Director of Technical Marketing (1996-1998), and most recently as Acting CTO (1999). Prior to co-founding Cygnus in 1989, Michael was a PhD candidate in the Stanford Graduate School for Electrical Engineering. Prior to Stanford, he worked at MCC (Microelectronic and Computer Technology, Corp.) in Austin, Texas where he began making contributions to the open source software development community. Michael's early work was focused on GNU software, which was in part an inspiration to Linus Torvalds back in 1991, and became the enabling technology for the creation of Linux. Today he is a frequent speaker and panelist on open source software and open source business models.

“When Red Hat gained a technical and engineering expert of the caliber of Michael Tiemann, it became clear to me that I could now devote my time to advancing the cause of open source through the Red Hat Center secure in the knowledge that Red Hat's technical leadership would remain unmatched,” said Ewing. “It's great that I can continue to be involved with Red Hat through my role on the board of directors, and at the same time devote more energy to fulfilling a long-held goal: spreading the power of the open source idea to other parts of society through the Center.”

Open Source and Internet Momentum

International Data Corp. (IDC) research states that Linux was the fastest-growing server operating environment in 1998, growing more than 190 percent in that year alone and capturing more than 15.8 percent of the 4.4 million revenue shipment server operating systems market segment. IDC also states that Red Hat Linux is by far the most popular distribution, preferred by 68.7 percent of U.S. Linux users.

Apache is the number one Web server and runs more than 55 percent of the Internet's Web sites and the Sendmail messaging solution powers 80 percent of Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Both Apache and Sendmail are included in the Red Hat Professional Edition and supported by Red Hat's services group. Finally, IDC predicts that by 2002, there will be more than 55 million handheld and notebook-style information appliance devices and that by 2005, shipments of these appliances will exceed shipments of PCs.

About Red Hat, Inc.

Founded in 1994, Red Hat (NASDAQ:RHAT) is a market leader in open source operating system (OS) software, services and information. Along with its award-winning open source Red Hat Linux OS, Red Hat offers a full line of services, including telephone support, on-site consulting, developer training, certification programs and priority access updates, making Red Hat a leading resource for knowledgeable, innovative, mission-critical open source solutions.

Red Hat shares all of its software innovations freely with the open source community under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The Official Red Hat Linux OS and related services are available directly from the company and through its partner, distributor and reseller programs, which include top PC and server manufacturers such as Compaq, Dell, Gateway, IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics.

Red Hat and the Official Red Hat Linux OS have received industry praise. Recent accolades include: Red Herring's Top 100 Companies of the Electronic Economy, Upside's Hot 100 Companies, Network World's 10 Companies to Watch, Federal Computer Week's Government Best Buy, Software Development's Jolt Award and InfoWorld's Product of the Year for three years in a row. Red Hat was also voted a “LinuxWorld Favorite” by the attendees of the two most recent LinuxWorld Expos, winning Best Server Distribution at the August show.

Red Hat is based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. and has offices worldwide.

 
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