Red Hat - Mergers and Acquisitions

Mergers and Acquisitions

Red Hat's first major acquisition was Delix Computer GmbH-Linux Div, the Linux based operating system division of Delix Computer, a German computer company, on July 30, 1999. Red Hat acquired Cygnus Solutions, a company that provided commercial support for free software, on January 11, 2000. Michael Tiemann, co-founder of Cygnus, served as the chief technical officer of Red Hat after the acquisition. On June 5, 2006, Red Hat acquired open source middleware provider JBoss for $420 million and integrated it as its own division of Red Hat.

On December 14, 1998, Red Hat made its first divestment, when Intel and Netscape acquired undisclosed minority stakes in the company. The next year, on March 9, 1999, Compaq, IBM, Dell and Novell each acquired undisclosed minority stakes in Red Hat. The company's largest acquisition was Cygnus Solutions in January 2000 for $674 million. Red Hat made the most acquisitions in 2000 with five: Cygnus Solutions, Bluecurve, Wirespeed Communications, Hell's Kitchen Systems, and C2Net.

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