BUSINESS TECH | Red Hat opens new office in PH, expands footprint in ASEAN
After maintaining its position as the top provider of enterprise-grade open source solutions for several years now, Red Hat has finally opened an office in the Philippines.
Romualdez, country manager, Philippines; Dirk‐Peter van Leeuwen, senior vice president and
general manager for Asia Pacific; Arun Oberoi, executive vice president, Global Sales and
Services; and Damien Wong, vice president and general manager, Asian Growth & Emerging Markets (GEMs).
MANILA, PHILIPPINES — After maintaining its position as the top provider of enterprise-grade open source solutions for several years now, Red Hat has finally opened an office in the Philippines, as the software technology company expands its footprint in the region.
Marking the company’s fifth office in ASEAN, Red Hat said that it’s geared at further strengthening their presence in the region while “empowering Philippines-based companies to innovate with open hybrid cloud solutions”.
“Our new office in Manila is a testament to Red Hat’s strong customer and partner ecosystem support in the ASEAN region,” said Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, senior vice president and general manager for Red Hat’s Asia Pacific region. “Organizations in the Philippines recognize that open source technology can help them to be more competitive and innovative. We look forward to providing open source solutions that can also advance in their digital transformation strategies and deliver any app in any environment.”
Red Hat celebrated the opening of the Philippine office by holding a day-long event dubbed Innovation Fest at the Fairmont Hotel in Makati city on November 15, which brought together local developers, technologists, and innovators to discuss open source technologies and trends.
Several top Red Hat executives including Arun Oberoi, executive vice president of global sales and services, officiated the office opening ceremony, joined by Damien Wong, vice president and general manager of Asian Growth and Emerging Markets, Wee Luen Chia, senior director and general manager for ASEAN, Gary Romualdez, the new country manager for the Philippines, and Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen.
Red Hat considers the Philippines as one of the major economic hubs in ASEAN and a strategic location for many reasons, including its robust commercial infrastructure, a highly educated technology talent pool, and a committed ecosystem of customers and partners.
“We are happy that Red Hat has set up an office in the Philippines as this affirms the company’s commitment to its local customers and partners,” said Patrick D. Reidenbach, president and general manager, UR Solutions, Inc. “As an Advanced Business Partner of Red Hat, we look forward to actively working together with the local team to support our customers better on open source technologies and innovations.”
Only recently, Red Hat was acquired by tech behemoth IBM in a $34 billion deal in what many industry analysts called the “most significant tech acquisition of 2018”. Both tech companies agreed that the buyout will “unlock the true value of cloud for business” by providing an open approach to cloud, which would feature unprecedented security and portability across multiple clouds.
Although it will still take US regulators several months to give the go-signal for the acquisition according to Red Hat executives, however, the deal will definitely “accelerate IBM’s high-value business model, making IBM the Number One hybrid cloud provider in an emerging $1 trillion growth market” said in an earlier press statement.
Further, Red Hat executives said that IBM would continue to maintain Red Hat’s open source innovation legacy, scaling its vast technology portfolio and empowering its widespread developer community. They even emphasised that Red Hat is to operate as a distinct unit within IBM’s Hybrid Cloud team.
