* The numbers on Red Hat are in, and they are big
Red Hat reported its 2005 fiscal fourth quarter and year-end numbers last week.
For the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2005, which ended Feb. 28, Red Hat took in $57.5 million in sales – more than double the amount of revenue the vendor made in the fourth quarter a year ago. The company also made a profit of $11.8 million for the quarter. For the fiscal year 2005, Red Hat’s revenue also soared, reaching $196.5 million – a 58% jump from fiscal 2004.
The big revenue boost came from 10,000 new customers Red Hat says it gained in the fourth fiscal quarter. This was the highest number of new customers ever gained by the vendor in a three-month period, Red Hat said. The company is also seeing strong growth in its sales channels: over half of Red Hat’s sales were done through channel partners, instead of direct-sales, which is a jump of 50% of the 2004 fourth quarter. This means more integrators and resellers.
Although not directly relating to the bottom line, Red Hat also said that the number of applications that run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux grew to over 1,800, which is an 80% increase over the number of independent software vendors (ISV) supporting Red Hat a year ago.
The numbers behind these numbers are the interesting part. As more software is ported to run on Red Hat, more integrators and resellers seem willing to bring support for Red Hat servers into their offerings. While this model is several degrees removed from Linux’s origins as an open source, word-of-mouth technology, this ISV/channel partner relationship is really driving Linux as a serious enterprise server platform in corporations.
