Red Hat recently announced its quarterly financial results which included revenue growth of 12% to $184 million for its Q1 2010 (ending in August 2090). Its net income was also up 37% to $29 million. I’ve followed Red Hat for many years and still have somewhere an annual report signed by its ex-president, wonderfully named Ransom Love. It’s one of the smaller of the 21 selected software vendors I include in my quarterly statistics. However with an estimated growth of 14% in Q2 2009 it topped the list in terms of software revenue growth (see Figure 1 which shows the strongest growing companies). Its latest results have set a tough mark for others to beat in Q3 as well.
Red Hat claims to be the world’s leading open source provider. Its products include its Enterprise Linux operating system and JBoss middleware. It is strongly focused on the Enterprise market and works with Microsoft on adding Linux as a guest in Windows virtual environments. No doubt part of its success is in providing ways of building lower cost server platforms for companies constrained by the recession. To a certain extent the success of Red Hat is counter indicative of the downturn.
Like other vendors Red Hat has been experiencing weaker sales in Asia Pacific than either the Americas or EMEA (see Figure 2 – in which I’ve ‘calendarised’ Red Hat and other vendors revenues for comparison purposes). As with my other vendor profiles I have estimated regional revenue growth by recasting values in local currency.
Red Hat’s revenues are tiny in a Software market, which was worth some $645 billion in the year to the end of Q2 2009 – a market with Microsoft as leader with a 6% share and tens of thousands of other players. However it is currently a leading example of growth in a falling market.
Do you know of similar or larger software companies who are beating the slump by producing positive revenue growth? Are you using Red Hat offerings? Let me know by commenting on this article.
Filed under: Red Hat, Software Tagged: | Americas, Asia Pacific, CA, Citrix, EMEA, Enterprise Linux, HP, JBoss, NetApp, Ransom Love, Red Hat, Salesforce.com, software
