Piper Jaffray Reports 50 Red Hat Partners Finished 1.5% Above Plan For Q4

In a report published by Piper Jaffray, 50 Red Hat RHT partners finished 1.5% above plan for Q4.

Piper Jaffray said that it surveyed 50 Red Hat partners and found that it finished 1.5% above plan for Q4, a slight improvement versus 0.9% above plan in Q3. “Partners continue to detect a better pace of business and faster pace of Unix-to-Linux migrations. We observe Red Hat's business benefiting from its positioning at the confluence of several hot segments: open source software, Cloud, and Virtualization. Investors are aware that RHT guides conservatively at the start of a new fiscal year, but we see a slight pricing bump in Q1 and favorable RHEL6 product cycle driving ongoing market share gains in 2011. Overweight, $57 target.”

Red Hat closed yesterday at $40.11.