Red Hat Crosses the $2 Billion Revenue Mark

As commercial open source companies have proliferated, it's become a given that folks anticipate multi-billion dollar firms focused exclusively on open source. And back in 2012, Red Hat emerged as an illustration of this fact, as it reported that for its fiscal year 2012, total revenue was $1.13 billion--nothing to shake a stick at.

Red Hat's unique business model of supplying strong support for open source software continues to work well, and now it has hit a new milestone. It has crossed $2 billion in annual revenues. Who says open source doesn't mean business?

On its earnings call, Red Hat chief executive Jim Whitehurst said that technology trends, including the need for big companies to deploy applications on multiple clouds, is boosting Red Hat’s business. It's Red Hat Enterprise Linux works seamlessly with numerous cloud platforms.

Whitehurst also noted that Microsoft’s decision to allow its popular Windows-centric SQL Server Databsse to run on Linux as a boost for Red Hat—and for Microsoft too. "This will enable SQL Server to deliver a consistent data platform across Windows Server and Linux, as well as on-premises and cloud," Microsoft said.

For the fourth quarter, Red Hat reported a profit of $53 million, or 29 cents a share, up from $47.7 million, or 26 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding options expenses, among other items, per-share profit rose to 52 cents from 43 cents. Revenue grew 17% to $543.5 million. Analysts projected 47 cents in adjusted earnings a share on $534.6 million in revenue.

The two billion dollar revenue milestone is a significant one. After all, Red Hat is the only large, public U.S. company still solely focused on open source, and it has proven that its support-driven business model wins.