Red Hat eyes China's cloud market for growth

Open-source software company Red Hat will increase its focus on the Chinese market and has plans to invest more into its research and development (R&D) and sales teams in the country.

In a China Daily report Monday, Red Hat President and CEO Jim Whitehurst said the growing emphasis on China comes as IT spend and cloud computing technology are booming in the country.

Like India and Brazil, China has a bigger market potential for cloud than developed economies such as the United States because these emerging markets do not carry the burden of having legacy systems, he explained.

This is why cloud computing in China will be a main driver for the company to help reach its fiscal revenue target of US$3 billion in the next five years, the executive added. Earlier in March, Red Hat announced its fiscal 2012 revenue of US$1 billion and became the first open source company to hit the mark.

Red Hat China's general manager, Chang Senming, also told China Daily 100 new employees will be added to local operations by end-2012, with more offices opening across China. Apart from its Shanghai office, a Beijing office opened in October, where new staff will soon be part of the external team that serves customers directly, Chang added.