Nearly three years after IBM-Red Hat deal, IBM president Jim Whitehurst is stepping down

Nearly three years after agreeing to sell Red Hat to IBM for $34 billion, former Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst is stepping down from his role as president of IBM, the company said Friday.

Whitehurst was named president of IBM in January 2020, after longtime CEO Ginni Rometty retired and named Arvind Krishna as her replacement.

Naming Whitehurst president of IBM was unusual for the company. IBM hadn’t had a split leadership structure with a separate CEO and president for more than 100 years, when Whitehurst was named president.

But Whitehurst had been considered a likely candidate to replace Krishna as CEO in the future.

In a blog post accompanying the announcement, Krishna said Whitehurst will continue to work as a senior advisor for IBM despite stepping down as president.

“In the almost three years since the acquisition was announced, Jim has been instrumental in articulating IBM’s strategy, but also, in ensuring that IBM and Red Hat work well together and that our technology platforms and innovations provide more value to our clients,” Krishna wrote.

Krishna was one of the primary influences in IBM’s pursuit of Red Hat back in 2018.

The company viewed Red Hat’s technology as critical to it becoming more competitive in the cloud software space, where it competes with tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft.

Red Hat has continued to grow since the merger closed in 2019, hiring more than 1,000 new employees and recently opening up 500 more.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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