We reported recently on Red Hat’s revenue growth and deferred revenue. One of the things I have been looking at recently is the slowdown in Red Hat’s growth in recent years, and the opportunities that the company has to improve that growth.

For some perspective it is worth noting that while Red Hat’s revenue has been growing steadily:

The rate of growth has been in decline for some time:

We have also noted (451 Group clients only) that the company will in all likelihood have to invest in inorganic growth if it is to meet its ambitious targets (such as 50% of server operating system market share by 2015, and growing to $1bn in revenue over three years – from February 2008).

Unfortunately for Red Hat its opportunities for inorganic growth in its core Linux market are limited since its dominance of the enterprise Linux market means that very few vendors would help it gain serious Linux market share. While there are multiple opportunities for the company to expand into new markets one problem that the company has is that would-be acquisition targets (MySQL, Hyperic) keep getting snapped up by its rivals.

(This isn’t a post about inorganic growth opportunities, but given our suggestion that open source can serve as an on-ramp to the cloud I would suggest that Red Hat could do a lot worse than look at Eucalyptus Systems as a long-term growth opportunity).

Fortunately for Red Hat the two major acquisitions that it has made in recent years (JBoss and Qumranet) both provide the company with opportunities to drive organic growth. Indeed, looking at the company’s business it is interesting to note quite how many opportunities for organic growth are at its disposal:

* JBoss – Red Hat’s middleware business continues to grow faster than the Linux business, albeit still not as a reportable segment of the company’s revenue. The company noted that 30% of its largest deals involved a middleware is fiscal 2009, there is still a lot of opportunity for greater cross-selling. The acquisition of systems integration and consulting firm Amentra was designed to help it deliver better value to JBoss customers. That and the JBoss MASS migration tools should start to deliver.

* The channel – 61% of deals came from the channel in Q1, up from 56% Q4. Red Hat more than doubled channel partners to 4,500 in 2009. Advanced Partners – VARs/SIs – grew from about 100 to about 350 in 09. Additionally the company has noted that while its renewal rates for its biggest accounts are close to 100% (“I think the only one that didn’t in the last couple of years was Oracle itself”, noted Jim Whitehurst in June) renewal rates from channel deals tend to be lower. It has put a program in place to rectify that.

* Increased penetration into existing accounts – Red Hat had 40,000 new customers in FY09. As the Eclipse Foundation’s Donald Smith noted, that means the company has a low revenue per customer. However, it also suggests huge opportunity for increased penetration into existing customers.

* Up-selling to Advanced Platform – traditionally, 70% of Red Hat’s Linux users have been on what was Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES. However, 50% of renewals in FY09 upgraded to the higher price Advanced Platform, rather than going for the standard Enterprise Linux Server.

* Virtualization – One of the drivers for AP is that it includes the advanced virtualization capabilities. Interest in virtualization is not only generating demand for the higher-priced RHEL variant but also helps Red Hat to avoid spending freezes on new hardware by de-coupling RHEL adoption from new hardware spending.

* Free to fee – Matt Asay noted recently that “nonpaid usage of Red Hat’s software that may well pose a bigger risk” to Red Hat than its chief rival Novell. That is something that the company is aware of, and it has been auditing customers to ensure that the amount of RHEL systems they have running is suitable for their subscription level. The company also sees a significant opportunity in converting users of community Linux distributions – such as CentOS or Ubuntu – to RHEL subscribers, and in 4Q09 landed a multi-year, multi-million dollar free-to-paid deal.

Will those be enough to help the company achieve its ambitious goals? Possibly not, and we do believe that Red Hat needs to expand its addressable market, but it is clear that even without acquisitions Red Hat has multiple opportunities for growing revenue in the next couple of years.