Red Hat Is Still On Target To Nearly Triple Revenues In Three Years, CEO Says

Red Hat, the first and only open source software company to reach over $1 billion in revenue, is still on track to nearly triple its revenue to $3 billion by 2016, CEO Jim Whitehurst said in an interview.

Whitehurst promised the $3 billion mark back in 2011 when the company first hit $1 billion.

Last week, Red Hat reported its fiscal year-end revenue of $1.33 billion. So when asked if the $3 billion mark was still possible, Whitehurst told us "I still feel good about that."

To give this some perspective, reaching $3 billion would make Red Hat about as big as Salesforce.com, which just hit $3 billion this year, the first enterprise cloud company to do so.

There's even an outside chance that Red Hat could reach $2 billion in this current fiscal year.

The company is ramping up its employee base to make some exponential growth happen. It added about 1,000 employees last year, to 5,700, and plans to add about another 600 to 800 in 2013.

Plus, it's not above acquiring its way to growth, either. It typically buys a couple companies a year. Last year Red Hat made three acquisitions, including its $104 million purchase of cloud management company, Manage IQ.