‘If we find the right company with the right fit, we will look at acquiring it’

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: At a fraction of the size of software behemoth, Microsoft, Linux distributor Red Hat commands an enviable following, both among developers and the enterprise community, with about a 25% market share on the servers and 5% on desktops. In India, its big wins include the automation of Canara Bank’s 1,000 branches on Linux.

In an interview with N Shivapriya, Red Hat Inc executive vice-president and chief financial officer, Charlie Peters, fresh from the acquisition of the Indian joint venture, shares his larger plans for India: expanding the support operations, a bit of back-office for Red Hat itself and possibly, some software engineering. And more exciting, perhaps an acquisition if the “fit is right”. Excerpts:

What kind of work do you do at your Pune centre and how does it tie-in with what you do globally?

The Pune centre is for web-support and caters to customers globally. Red Hat has multiple support centres in the UK, Australia, US and one in China for the Chinese market. But the only web-support centre is the one in Pune.

The support function in Pune will grow in size. Its nature will also change. We will also be providing other services in Pune that will serve Red Hat on a global basis—eg, IT staff to help with our internal computing needs and also possibly, engineering staff.

Could you elaborate on the engineering side?

It will possibly be additional development engineers. We have an open source model, so some of the development that happens on Linux is not by people employed by Red Hat. There are also individual contributors who may not be employed by anybody and are doing it on their own because they are interested in Linux or software for society.

How much does India contribute to the Linux open source movement?

That’s hard to know because it is developed on the internet and you could be located anywhere. Some of the Linux developers never meet each other and know each other only by their e-mail addresses or web names. I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess but the technical talent in India is outstanding. The interest in open source and in Linux is very high, so my assumption is, you could get very high contributions coming from India.

Are you talking to the government on any low-cost initiatives?