Red Hat Support Continues To Flourish

ruphus13 writes "As the pure-play Open Source companies continue to dwindle, Red Hat has thrived through the recession. Its support revenues have grown 20+%, and account for 75+% of its revenues. 'Instead of the traditional strategy of selling expensive proprietary software licenses, as practiced by the Microsofts and Oracles of the world, Red Hat gets the vast majority of its revenues from selling support contracts. In the third quarter of last year, support subscriptions accounted for $164 million of its $194 million in revenue, up 21 percent year-over-year. All 25 of the company's largest support subscribers renewed subscriptions, even despite a higher price tag.'"

Comments

Re:I don't buy it.

[benjamindees]

I think you can see where this is going...

Yes, we can see that you do things half-assed backwards.

Open Source software, unlike proprietary software, can be supported in-house better, more easily, and more cheaply than via outside support. Large "enterprises", at least those that take proper advantage of scale and hire competent engineers, have less of a need to pay for outside Linux support than your small "consulting gigs" do.

The vast majority of large "enterprises" that outsource Linux support only do so due to the structural flaws of an IT support system designed around inherent limitations of proprietary software.