In the words of Red Hat Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Whitehurst, “Selling free is hard,” but the company’s open-source packages are selling indeed. Last year, Red Hat raked in $2.4 billion in revenue, and to top that off, Whitehurst publicly stated a goal of $5 billion within five years.

“Red Hat seems to be going from strength to strength,” said Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) (pictured, right), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio. But can the company hit the $5-billion mark in just five years from a starting point of $2.4 billion?

Knight and co-host Stu Miniman (@stu) (pictured, left) answered this question and more during a final analysis of news and events surrounding Red Hat Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. (*Disclosure below).

The financial goal is ambitious but achievable, Knight and Miniman agreed. The bellwether is a number from 2016 besides the $2.4 in pure revenue — the $3 billion in bookings. Looking back to three years ago, Red Hat garnered about $2 billion in bookings, Miniman stated.

“That was almost a 50-percent growth rate in three years. So if in three years from now, we do 50-percent growth rate, we’re going to have […] $4.5. [billion],” he said, noting that the math may not be linear, since Red Hat is scaling its many products.

Can cloud and containers carry Red Hat to $5 billion?

The spread of hybrid cloud in enterprises is a trend that Red Hat could piggyback to this $5 billion goal, Miniman stated.

“Red Hat has a good position to live in lots of those environments and really help solution-ize and give, really, that almost adult supervision that the enterprise wants,” he said.

And if the Red Hat T-shirt that reads “Linux is containers. Containers are Linux” is an indication, the company feels that raising awareness of this could make them money. After all, containers are hot in the enterprise, but Docker Inc. seems to pop up in that conversation more than Red Hat despite its container DNA, Knight and Miniman discussed.

“Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the first platform that they build around,” Miniman said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Red Hat Summit 2017. (* Disclosure: Red Hat Inc. sponsors some Red Hat Summit segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither Red Hat nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE