Open source software specialist Red Hat says its business version of Linux was sold to a record 10,000 customers during its latest financial quarter.
Red Hat is the leading supplier of the open source operating system, and its growth is seen as an indicator of Linux adoption.
The firm sells software on a subscription basis, and this revenue grew in its fourth quarter to $66.7m (£38.6bn), up 44 per cent year on year. ‘We outgrew leading industry analysts’ estimates for Linux market growth and substantially outpaced rivals,’ said Dion Cornett, vice president for investor relations at Red Hat.
The vendor’s financial success is in contrast to its main Linux rival, Novell, which is trying to shift focus from its traditional Netware system to open source. Novell’s sales in its most recent financial quarter fell to $274.4m (£158.8m) from $290.1m (£167.9m) the year before.
Ovum analyst Laurent Lachal says Red Hat is going from strength to strength.
‘Its outpacing of the overall Linux market growth is in stark contrast with the lacklustre performance that arch-Linux rival Novell keeps delivering,’ he said.
‘Red Hat is clearly succeeding in moving Linux more deeply into its users’ infrastructure.’
Global sales of Linux-based servers were $5.7bn (£3.3bn) in 2005, according to IDC. The researcher says Linux was the third most popular server operating system after Windows, with $17.7bn (£10.2bn) sales, and Unix at $17.5bn (£10.1bn).
