* Red Hat anticipates growth in international sales
Red Hat expects more sales to come from outside the U.S.
Following this year’s news of Linux installations overseas, Red Hat last week said that it expects more than half its revenue to come from non-U.S. sales in the next 12 months. The company currently makes about 40% of its sales outside the U.S. Last year, its non-U.S. revenue was around 31%.
If next year’s performance reflects what the company did this year, it could be bringing in as much as $20 million to $25 million in overseas revenue in the near future. For its fiscal year 2004, which ended in August, Red Hat made $46.3 million in sales, up 60% from the previous year.
The growth in Linux overseas is no secret. The Chinese government is very active in promoting and developing Linux as a platform for its own government and business interests. Meanwhile, government agencies in Germany and France have very-publicly gone with all-Linux desktops as a way to save on Windows PC operating system costs.
The only issues that might not bode well for Red Hat in its overseas aspirations is the company’s U.S. roots. Many foreign government agencies are turning to Linux not just as a cost saving measure, but to diversify its sourcing of software products away from one company and one country – i.e., U.S.-based Microsoft. In Europe and Asia, Linux versions that are from those respective regions – SuSE from Germany, and Red Flag in China.
In other Red Hat news, an ongoing phishing scam was recently reported, with the intention of getting Red Hat sys admins to open up holes on servers by downloading a bogus patch. More on the security threat here:
