As chief operating officer, Whitehurst was widely tipped to succeed the outgoing Delta chief executive but despite turning around the corporate basket case his day in the sun never came.

About two months after resigning in late August, he received a call to meet Red Hat head honcho Matthew Szulik for the top job at the open source software and services company.
Szulik, who was set to become Red Hat chairman then, didn't have to do any hard selling. It was like "you got me at hello", Whitehurst says.

When Whitehurst's appointment was announced in late December, the open source world went into a frenzy. The main worry was a virtual unknown replacing Szulik and concerns about whether Whitehurst knew anything about technology.

The concerns proved groundless. The former Boston Consulting Group director is a self-confessed Linux fan, having dabbled in various Linux distributions himself for some time.

Whitehurst says Red Hat has hit the big time with blue-chip clients such as the New York Stock Exchange and National Australia Bank, but he recognises the company still has a long way to go.

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