Red Hat might have just revealed one of the secrets to earning a billion dollars in revenue per year with open source – lots of work and releases. Earlier this month, the open source giant announced its new infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) solution, CloudForms, for companies that use hybrid clouds.  Last week Red Hat was all about releasing software. Unfortunately, the company’s earnings statement put a bit of a damper on things. It wasn’t enough to keep Red Hat from getting off to a busy start this week with three more software releases. The new releases come just in time for Red Hat’s annual conferences, Red Hat Summit and JBoss World happening June 26-29 in Boston.

In addition to all of the software and earnings news, Red Hat has also announced the winners for its Innovation Awards. This is the sixth year for the annual awards that recognize customers, partners and communities for their innovative use and extension of Red Hat products. The awards recognize winners in seven categories:

1. Optimized systems – Recognizes striking performance, scalability and/or groundbreaking enhancements delivered with Red Hat solutions
2. Next generation business application – Recognizes overall performance of creating, maintaining and deploying successful next generation business applications using Red Hat solutions
3. Outstanding open source architecture – Recognizes the development of an innovative architecture using a combination of Red Hat’s platform, middleware, cloud and/or storage solutions
4. Superior alternatives – Recognizes the most successful migration from proprietary solutions to Red Hat’s platform, middleware, cloud and/or storage solutions
5. Extensive partner ecosystem – Recognizes the most successful use of Red Hat’s expanding partner ecosystem to create innovative architectures based on Red Hat’s platform, middleware, cloud and/or storage solutions
6. Best middleware implementation – Recognizes the most cutting-edge utilization of the JBoss Enterprise Middleware portfolio
7. Best storage implementation – Recognizes the most cutting-edge utilization of Red Hat Storage software

A panel of judges, which included journalists from the technical press, industry analysts and the vice president of Red Hat, selected the winners based on the uniqueness, complexity and magnitude of their implementation. The 2012 winners for each category are:

1. Cornell University Institute for Biotechnology and Life Science Technologies – Best storage implementation
2. Allianz Group – Best Middleware Implementation
3. Appcelerator – Extensive Partner Ecosystem
4. Sprint Nextel – Superior Alternatives
5. State Street Corporation – Outstanding Open Source Architecture
6. Toll Global Logistics – Next Generation Application
7. UNE EPM Telecommunications – Optimized Systems

The seven category winners will compete for the 2012 Red Hat Innovator of the Year, which the public selects via online voting. Red Hat is accepting votes until Wednesday, June 27 at 11:59 PM ET. Red Hat will recognize the category winners and announce the Innovator of the year at Red Hat Summit and JBoss World 2012. Additional details on the winning submissions are available on the Red Hat Innovation Awards page.