Red Hat boosts open source system business

Red Hat Senior Vice President Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen speaks during a press conference at the Grand InterContinental Hotel in southern Seoul, Friday. / Courtesy of Red Hat Korea

By Yoon Sung-won

Red Hat said Friday it has become the world’s first open-source system provider to achieve over $2 billion in sales last year.

The company said its sales in the 2016 fiscal year has increased 21 percent year-on-year, on the back of 56 consecutive quarters of sales growth in the fourth quarter last year. It said companies are increasingly adopting open-source systems, a trend it expects to accelerate in the coming years.

“Now the open-source system in not an alternative anymore,” Red Hat Senior Vice President Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen said during a press conference in Seoul, Friday. “Transition to digitized systems is making all companies into technology firms. Red Hat will support our corporate clients to minimize IT infrastructure and shift to become digitized businesses.”

The Red Hat executive said the company expects to expand its market by providing new technologies and systems based on what it calls the “container.”

The container is a virtualization technology that allows operators to run a service on a cloud system without being subordinate to an infrastructure. This technology has been emphasized as it helps system operators develop and distribute system applications.

“In the Korean market, we plan to launch diverse seminars and marketing promotions to strengthen leadership in the container sector,” the executive said. “We will boost cooperation with independent software developers.”

Established in 1993 in the United States, Red Hat has been the world’s leading provider of open-source technologies and systems, targeting corporate clients.

Citing findings by international market researcher IDC, he said 91 percent of corporate decision-makers are considering adopting a hybrid cloud system and 88 percent plan to utilize OpenStack technology for their private cloud systems in the next three years.

“This shows that Red Hat, with its top-notch technologies and products in the hybrid cloud, OpenStack and container sectors, will continue to grow,” he said.