Growth investor EQT acquires SUSE; creates the largest independent open source company

The company has been acquired from Micro Focus by growth investor EQT.

Moneycontrol News

March 18, 2019 / 19:59 IST

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SUSE announced the creation of the largest independent open source company following the completion of SUSE's acquisition by growth investor EQT from Micro Focus.

The newly independent SUSE has expanded its executive team, adding new leadership roles and experience to foster its continued momentum into this next stage of corporate development. Enrica Angelone has been named to the new post of chief financial officer, and Sander Huyts is SUSE's new chief operations officer. Thomas Di Giacomo, formerly chief technology officer for SUSE, is now president of Engineering, Product and Innovation. All three report to SUSE CEO Nils Brauckmann.

SUSE has been acquired multiple times before being an independent entity finally. The company was acquired by Novell in 2004, which was acquired by Attachmate in 2010. Micro Focus then acquired Attachmate in 2014, and made SUSE an independent division before selling to EQT.

"Current IT trends make it clear that open source has become more important in the enterprise than ever before. We believe that makes our status as a truly independent open source company more important than ever…," Brauckmann said.

Al Gillen, group vice president, Software Development and Open Source, IDC, said, "SUSE's return to the role of an independent open source software company comes at a pivotal point in the industry. Open source software is the favored way to build new solutions today and is irreplaceable as the foundation for most public cloud services. As one of the industry's largest purely open source software companies, SUSE's independence will benefit customers as the company builds on its heritage of technical excellence, value-driven partnerships and community engagement to deliver timely technology solutions to the market."