Red Hat CEO: We’re “tough to do business with”
Red Hat’s new chief executive Jim Whitehurst has admitted his company needs to improve its approach to its customers and partners.
Speaking on the first day of the Linux specialist’s annual user conference in Boston, Whitehurst said his company need to work on its approach to “mundane” issues such as its own internal systems and managing customer records.
He said: “There is still a lot we need to do around execution. One thing I have heard from customers and partners over the last few months is that we are basically kind of tough to do business with – great technology but not necessarily the easiest company to do business with.”
Red Hat Exchange (RHX), launched at last year’s summit in May, was an example of where the company had listened to customer feedback and changed its processes accordingly, said Whitehurst. RHX was basically a portal to allow Red Hat customers to download applications, in a similar model to Salesforce.com’s Application Exchange, but it had failed to gel with customers according to Whitehurst.
