IBM's new boss bets the farm on AI and hybrid cloud

Arvind Krishna makes series of leadership changes - including a new boss for Red Hat - designed to bring his vision to life

IBM's new CEO has called for a "maniacal focus" from the "entire company" on hybrid cloud and AI on his first day in the hotseat.

In a missive to IBM staff this morning, Arvind Krishna also unveiled a series of leadership changes designed to bring his vision to life, including appointing a new CEO of Red Hat.

Having risen from SVP of cloud and cognitive services to succeed Ginni Rometty, Krishna is betting the farm on hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence as he outlined his aim to make Big Blue "the most trusted technology partner of the 21st century".

"Hybrid cloud and AI are two dominant forces driving change for our clients and must have the maniacal focus of the entire company," he wrote.

There is a "unique window of opportunity" for IBM and Red Hat to win the architectural battle in the cloud by establishing Linux, containers and Kubernetes as the new standard, he claimed.

"We can make Red Hat OpenShift the default choice for hybrid cloud in the same way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the default choice for the operating system," he stated.

New Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier's "deep engineering skills" made him the right choice for leading the open source software brand, which IBM acquired in 2018 for $34bn, Krishna said.

Cormier will replace long-time Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, who will now take up the post of president, heading IBM's Strategy and its Cloud and Cognitive Software unit.

Bridget van Kralingen will succeed Martin Schroeter as senior vice president of Global Markets following his retirement, while Howard Boville will join IBM on 1 May from Bank of America to become senior vice president of Cloud Platform.

"[Boville] is a proven strategist and expert in the realm of cloud and has played a critical role in developing the financial services ready public cloud with IBM," Krishna said.