Software vendor Red Hat has seen a rise in revenue to $127.3m (£63.3m) in its second quarter, up 28 per cent from $99.7m (£49.5m) during the same period last year.

The growth was due to a 29 per cent increase in subscription sales from open source products such as Linux, up from $84.9m (£42.2m) last year to $109.2m (£54.3m) this year.

Red Hat is particularly pleased with the results as they come at a time of heavy financial investment, said chief executive Charlie Peters.

"We continue to see robust demand for our open source solutions and are encouraged by our market position," he said.

Red Hat's open source software is available on a subscription basis, rather than offering traditional licences, and the vendor makes money from technical support, training and and add-ons.

Training and services brought in revenue of $18.1m, (£9m) compared with $14.7m (£7.3m) in the second quarter last year.