Value Strategy, App and Cloud Platforms: Exclusive Interview with Edd Hoppit, EMEA Director, Red Hat

1. How is Red Hat aligning its technology strategy with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and the country’s push toward large-scale digital transformation?

Red Hat’s approach enables businesses to innovate freely, operate securely, and accelerate their digital transformation, all of which align with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. Our emphasis on open-source technologies, hybrid cloud, and AI-driven automation directly advances the Kingdom’s goal of shaping a technologically driven, diversified, and knowledge-based economy. By working with partners in the public and private sectors, we help them modernize IT infrastructure, enhance digital skills, and develop sovereign cloud capabilities that meet local regulatory and data-residency requirements. Red Hat offers Saudi businesses an open, flexible, and scalable platform that enables them to drive innovation while maintaining control, transparency, and compliance, all of which are essential components of Vision 2030’s digital agenda. Our ultimate objective is to become a trusted technology partner that helps Saudi companies adopt sustainable innovation models, develop local capabilities, and compete confidently in the global digital economy. 

• In what ways does Red Hat’s open-source model help drive cross-industry collaboration and spark faster innovation across the region?

Red Hat’s open-source model is founded on the principle that innovation accelerates when individuals work together. Businesses, developers, and governments must work together to tackle common challenges through open technology development rather than working in isolation. This strategy dismantles conventional barriers to innovation, enabling organizations to jointly create, test, and refine solutions on open, secure platforms. Open source not only accelerates innovation but also promotes trust, flexibility, and interoperability, as the code remains transparent and accessible for everyone. At Red Hat, our mission is to transform community-driven innovations into enterprise-ready versions so that organizations can confidently deploy them at scale while benefiting from a global ecosystem of ideas, partners, and expertise. Our open-source model thereby turns innovation into a shared journey, allowing industries to advance jointly rather than separately.

• How are you helping enterprises achieve efficiency and modernization through automation and virtualization?

At Red Hat, we help enterprises maximize efficiency and drive modernization by simplifying how they deploy, automate, and manage IT across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. When it comes to efficiency, our latest innovations make operations faster and smarter, whether it’s RHEL 10, which introduces image mode, or RHEL Lightspeed AI assistant, which simplifies deployments and guides users through complex tasks. The Ansible Automation Platform, now integrated with Terraform and powered by Lightspeed, allows organizations to automate at scale by reducing manual work and improving consistency across environments. With Managed OpenShift available across all major cloud providers, businesses can simplify operations and scale seamlessly through OpenShift Lightspeed. For modernization, Red Hat offers a proven pathway for enterprise evolution through our four-phase virtualization strategy (validated by large-scale success stories like Emirates NBD’s 9,000+ VM migration) that helps organizations modernize without disrupting workflows. Tools like Event-Driven Ansible enable policy enforcement as code, ensuring standardized, secure, and compliant IT operations. Lastly, the Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite further enhances productivity by reducing complexity and accelerating deployments. Together, these solutions empower enterprises to modernize their cloud infrastructure, improve operational efficiency, and unlock resources for future AI-driven innovation, all while maintaining flexibility, security, and control.

• With data sovereignty becoming increasingly important in the Middle East, how is Red Hat helping organizations in Saudi Arabia maintain compliance and control over their data while adopting hybrid and AI-driven solutions?

In markets like Saudi Arabia, where technology and regulatory frameworks are constantly evolving, data sovereignty stands as a central pillar of national digital strategies. Organizations are required to maintain a balance between innovation and responsibility, enabling agile growth while safeguarding security, privacy, and compliance. In line with this, our Open Hybrid Cloud is designed to help enterprises ensure complete control over their data while leveraging the scalability of cloud technologies. Similarly, our solutions such as Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and OpenShift equip enterprises with secure, standardized infrastructure to manage workloads across private, public, and sovereign clouds, while ensuring sensitive data remains compliant with local regulations. With transparency and interoperability at its core, Red Hat’s technologies enhance trust and accountability. In the Saudi Arabian market, we closely collaborate with partners and customers to build localized cloud and AI ecosystems that meet national requirements. Our key goal is to enable enterprises to innovate confidently within regulated environments.

• How do you plan to expand Red Hat’s role in the Saudi and MENA markets in the coming years?

Red Hat is actively working towards expanding its presence and impact across Saudi Arabia and the broader MENA region. Over the next few years, we intend to strengthen local partnerships, invest in talent development, and extend collaboration with government and enterprise customers to accelerate digital transformation, in accordance with Vision 2030. We will continue to enable organizations to build AI-ready, hybrid cloud environments that are secure, scalable, and compliant with local data-sovereignty requirements. This requires expanding our network of local partners and system integrators to bring Red Hat’s technologies closer to our clients. Additionally, we are supporting certification and skills-enabling initiatives to equip the Kingdom’s emerging IT workforce with the resources and knowledge necessary to drive innovation using open-source technologies. As the region moves towards a diversified, knowledge-driven, and digitally sovereign economy, Red Hat hopes to remain a long-term technology partner in this progress.