RALEIGH — Red Hat has a new partner. Red Hat and Cohesity, a leader in AI-powered data security and management, have jointly announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) will be the foundational operating system moving forward for the Cohesity Data Cloud platform.
Cohesity’s platform combines AI-powered data security and management in a single platform, with security features, simplicity, and scalability. The announced change is intended to reduce the operating system maintenance and patching burdens required of its product engineers.
Red Hat CEO Matt Hicks weighed in on the deal, a sign of its importance:
“The chain of modern IT security is only as strong as the most basic link, which frequently is Linux. With Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Cohesity will bring the strong capabilities of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform to its customer base.”
Red Hat adds to wins
The move represents the latest win for Red Hat following its decision earlier this year to stop support of CentOS, the open-source version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The remaining CentOS stream is a “beta” version of the product, and the transition away from official support has led several companies including Salesforce and Oracle to embrace “official” Red Hat products.
According to the press release, Cohesity is making the transition away from the current use of CentOS Linux 7. The release emphasized the shift to RHEL, and the ability for Cohesity to focus on innovating and enhancing the customer experience, leaving Red Hat to take care of the operating system upkeep, security patches, and migration support.
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Cohesity Positioning
Cohesity has been busy this year, forming partnerships with IBM, Cisco, and government IT solutions company Carasoft. The company was also named a Gartner® leader for Enterprise Backup and Recovery software for the fourth year in a row.
Cohesity’s success means an IPO is under consideration. The company has made several moves to position itself in recent months, including some layoffs to “optimize” its workforce and strategic hires at the C-suite level. In August of this year, the company hired Sanjay Poonen, former VMware CEO as its new executive officer, replacing founder Mohit Aron who stepped back to focus on technology and engineering. The company had previously considered an IPO in late 2021, valued at $3.7 billion at the time, but did not proceed in a difficult 2022.
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In its latest announcement, the company has shared the formation of a new CEO Advisory Council including industry leaders Indra Nooyi, formerly of PepsiCo., Jim Snabe, formerly of SAP and Chairman ad Siemens, Ken Denman, on the board of Costco, VMware, and Motorola, and Tami Erwin, former CEO of Verizon Business.
The move for more CEO support and the shift to the “official” version of RHEL likely represent positioning for a second attempt at an IPO in the coming months.
