Red Hat Shooting For $5 Billion In Sales With Expansion Into Cloud Services

Red Hat Inc RHT, a company known for selling Linux based software to enterprises, recently became the first $2 billion Open Source company. Now, the company has another ambitious goal: Hit $5 billion with its expansion into cloud services.

At its core, the cloud is all about Linux and Open Source, two things Red Hat knows extensively. Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst told TechCrunch, "This is a really great thing for us in that most of the innovation happening around the cloud is happening in Open Source... Our planning assumption is that with our existing portfolio we feel comfortable we can get to $5 billion."

While there are just a handful of that have hit the $5 billion in revenue mark -- such Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Salesforce and VMware and Cisco -- Red Hat’s ambitious goal is lofty but not out of reach.

Currently, Red Hat would have to achieve a 58 percent per year growth rate to hit its target.

Red Hat releases Q1 earnings after Wednesday's close.