One of the sectors that was early to adopt Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) was the financial services sector, which is currently being pummeled by a massive economic crisis in the U.S. However, Red Hat hasn't yet felt serious ramifications from that, something Whitehurst attributed to the subscription-based, open-source business model the company employs.

"What we do is clearly an economically superior development model, making that consumable to the enterprise," he said. "It's something we’ve done for years and something that someone else hasn't been able to duplicate."

Having a subscription model also means that Red Hat already has revenue on the books going into a new fiscal year, so it can forecast accordingly and realistically for growth, Whitehurst said.

Tuesday marked the first time Whitehurst spoke to Red Hat analysts en masse, as he only took over for longtime Red Hat leader Matt Szulik last December when Szulik left the company for health reasons. Whitehurst came to Red Hat from Delta Airlines, where he was chief operating officer.

Another customer segment Whitehurst said is an opportunity for Red Hat is people who are using the free community version of Red Hat Linux, called Fedora.