Red Hat Looks To Intel For New Sales Exec

Symon spent 22 years at Intel in various sales and business development positions, and most recently was senior managing director of the Intel Global Software Relations organization within Red Hat's Software Solutions Group. In this position, Symon helped create a software influencer organization by developing partnerships with solution providers, ISVs and operating system vendors.

Symon also founded Intel's Influencer Evangelist and Worldwide Business Development organizations, and earlier in his career held the positions of worldwide director of the Customer Solutions Group Influencer Sales Team; Americas director of the Architecture Management organization; manager of the Business Development organization and director of the Strategic Relations Managers Group.

In March 2007, Red Hat and Intel launched the Global Channel Acceleration Program, a joint reseller initiative aimed at helping channel partners bring Linux-based solutions to market. In the program, Red Hat pre-certifies configurations and basic components and VARs deploy the Red Hat solutions on Intel platforms.

Red Hat is one of the few companies whose recent earnings haven't disappointed Wall Street. In Red Hat's fiscal third quarter earnings call last month, the company reported net profit of $24.3 million, or 12 cents a share, up from $20.3 million, or 10 cents a share, during the year-ago period. Excluding items, Red Hat reported profit of 24 cents per share, compared to the 17 cents a share analysts had expected.

"Red Hat is clearly positioned for continued growth and has established itself as the industry leader in the open-source infrastructure and middleware space," Symon said in a statement.