Standard and Poor’s announced that Red Hat would join the S&P 500 as of the close of trading on Friday. Red Hat replaces lender CIT Group, which had a market capitalization below $275 million, ranking it 500th in the index.

The market seemed to like the S&P news. In after hours trading Friday, Red Hat was up 8.45 percent to $22.34.

Red Hat, the fast-growing provider of open source software solutions to enterprise customers, will be added to the S&P 500 GICS (Global Industry Classification Standard) Systems Software Sub-Industry index.

The company has been aggressively pursuing new opportunities to help companies interested in Linux and open source adoption including the latest trend toward cloud computing.

Red Hat recently announced a cloud certification program and enlisted Amazon as a partner.

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