Bangalore: Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the promotion of long time Red Hat employee Arun Kumar from senior director of business development for Asia Pacific (APAC) to general manager for Red Hat India.

Kumar has 20 years of diverse IT experience in sales, services, marketing and operations in the United States (U.S.) and across the Asia Pacific region. Since joining Red Hat in 1999, Kumar has held multiple leadership positions at Red Hat. In addition to his most recent role as senior director of business development for APAC, Kumar has served as senior director of APAC Services, director Global Alliances – HP and Sun; practice director of Global Professional Services - Western region, and practice director of Global Professional Services.

“India is a key growth market for Red Hat. Customer interest in reliable and secure open source solutions to support their mission critical business needs continues to grow, and more opportunities are emerging in the form of major IT projects initiated by local government agencies,” said Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, vice president and general manager, Red Hat Asia Pacific. “Arun has a strong track record of success in the U.S. and Asia Pacific. I am confident that he will be able to further nurture and grow our business across India.”

“I am extremely excited to head Red Hat India,” said Kumar. “Customers in India are increasingly looking to migrate to an open hybrid cloud from their legacy and proprietary infrastructure, and Red Hat is perfectly poised to partner with them on this journey.”

Kumar has a Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Electronics and Communications) from Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai, India.