Open source software specialist Red Hat has increased its sales by more than 40 per cent during the first quarter of the firm’s financial year.

Revenue of $118.9m (£59.4m) was up 42 per cent compared to the same period last year. Sales of subscriptions for supporting Red Hat’s products, such as the Linux operating system and JBoss middleware tools, grew 44 per cent to £103m (£51.5m) – an indicator of the growing adoption of open source software.

‘We started the quarter in high gear with the release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and followed with important launches for JBoss and our middleware strategy,’ stated Red Hat chief financial officer Charlie Peters.

‘We are pleased with our solid earnings performance as we executed on initiatives to continually garner market share and mind share in a rapidly growing market. Our investments in sales, marketing and R&D during the quarter set a solid foundation for the balance of the year’