Michael Byrd
Director, government channel sales
Red Hat Inc.
Raleigh, N.C. Customer: classified
How the customer benefited: An intelligence agency needed the ability to gather data and analyze it quickly. Byrd led a team including Red Hat, Dell Inc. and BAE Systems Inc. to build the data system under tight budget constraints and with demanding growth requirements.
What makes him a leader: Byrd came to Red Hat specifically to build the government channel, which has doubled each of the last three years. Byrd established partnerships with resellers, systems integrators, original equipment distributors and others to make Red Hat more easily accessible to the government customer.
As the leader of the government channel team, he has built on those partnerships and also used innovative strategies such as a subscription renewal program that makes customers more predictable.