Red Hat Targets South American Markets, Opens Offices in Brazil, Argentina

is launching two operations in South America as part of its global expansion plans.

The Raleigh-based developer of Linux software, services and support is opening offices in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, after acquiring two operations for one of its South American distributors.

Financial terms of the acquisitions were not disclosed.

In its most recent quarterly earnings report, Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) Chief Executive Officer Matthew Szulik said the company was proceeding with plans for growth and hiring additional personnel. The company plans to increase its workforce of 1,200 by 25 percent this year. It is also in the process of acquiring Atlanta-based JBoss.

Red Hat will offer support and training as well as sales through operations to be called Red Hat Brazil and Red Hat Argentina.

"These new operations in Brazil and Argentina deliver on Red Hat's commitment to continued global expansion into international markets," Szulik said in a statement.

"There is a tremendous opportunity in Latin America where the public and private sectors are rapidly adopting open source technologies," he added. "We are thrilled to now have a direct presence in the market to both support the local open source communities and to help drive further momentum of open source adoption by customers and partners."

Red Hat has hired Julian Somodi to act as general manager for the overall Red Hat South America group. He has been a Red Hat partner for South America over the past two years.

The Buenos Aires Ministry of Health and the Poder Judicial de Peru are already Red Hat customers in South America.

Red Hat partners with HP, Oracle, IBM, Dell and Intel in Latin America.