Sales increased to US$481 million, an increase of 14 per cent year-on-year for the corresponding quarter while GAAP operating income for the period was US$71 million, up 39 per cent year-on-year.
Red Hat's fiscal year runs from March 1 to the end of February.
Most of the company's revenue during the quarter came from subscriptions - US$425 million, an increase of 14 per cent year-on-year. There was an additional US$5 million from cloud providers who are certified by Red Hat.
A media release quoted chief executive Jim Whitehurst as saying: "Our solid start to fiscal year 2016 was evidenced by strong constant currency revenue growth of over 20%.
"This strong growth reflects in part the demand for our open, hybrid cloud technologies across four footprints: bare metal, virtualisation, private cloud and public cloud deployments.
"Red Hat's portfolio of technologies becomes increasingly strategic to customers who are looking to expand their capabilities and agility to build and deploy applications across these data center footprints."
