Red Hat goes into the black

By Steve Malone

Posted on 18 Dec 2002 at 12:51

Leading Linux supplier Red Hat has finally started to make money. The company has reported a profit of $304,000 on revenues of $24.3 million in the quarter ending November, a rise of 14 per cent over the previous quarter.

The move into the black was fuelled by big increases in its enterprise revenues, which account for 93 per cent of Red Hat's total revenues. These grew 15 per cent to $22.5 million. The enterprise subscription revenues rose by 29 per cent with gross margins of 82 per cent.

Another big winner was in advanced server sales which increased to 12,000 subscriptions, up 50 per cent on the previous quarter.

Although these figures are by no means in the Microsoft league, it proves that there is money to be made in open source software. What will be worrying to Microsoft is the gains it has made in the key enterprise software market.