SUSE Enters Into a Partnership with EQT

SUSE announced plans to partner with growth investor EQT to continue the momentum, strategy execution and product expansion as an independent business. The completion of EQT's acquisition of SUSE from Micro Focus is subject to Micro Focus shareholder and customary regulatory approvals and is expected to occur in early 2019.

Having enjoyed seven years of continuous expansion, SUSE is set to be acquired from Micro Focus by EQT, which is a development-focused investor with extensive experience in the software industry. Under Micro Focus ownership and with their investment and support, it has developed as a business, cementing its position as a leading provider of enterprise-grade, open source software-defined infrastructure and application delivery solutions.

In a partnership with EQT, SUSE expects to be equipped to further exploit the excellent market opportunity both in the Linux operating system area as well as in emerging product groups in the open source space. Under the continued leadership of SUSE CEO Nils Brauckmann, SUSE will move to the next stage of its corporate evolution and operate globally as an independent company post-completion of the transaction.

To ensure continuity, its business expects staffing, customer relationships, partnerships, product and service offering, commitment to open source leadership and support for the key open source communities to remain unchanged.

 Market and SUSE Potential

SUSE expects to be well positioned to further realize its potential with backing from EQT to fuel its momentum and build on the progress made under Micro Focus.

SUSE believes the acquisition is well timed as the market-driven need for digital transformation, built on open source software-defined infrastructure (SDI) and application delivery technologies, is increasing. Organizations are invariably increasing their focus on open source technologies and solutions to transform their businesses.

With its heritage in open source software, strong brand and an array of market-leading software-defined infrastructure and application delivery solutions, it is ideally positioned to capitalize on this market dynamic, creating tremendous value for customers and partners.

Further investment and support will enable its continued expansion and advance innovation to drive growth in SUSE's core business as well as in emerging technologies, both organically and through add-on acquisitions. This investment is a recognition of SUSE's value and potential and EQT's belief in the strength of its culture, leadership and existing strategy.

Stability and Continuity

SUSE intends to continue to deliver and innovate based on current and future market requirements, operating with its current mission, vision and strategy. The current leadership team led by its CEO Nils Brauckmann will remain and will continue to focus on the success of customers and partners with a deeply rooted commitment to and engagement with open source communities and projects.

Given the relationship-centric nature of the industry retaining the leadership team that has created rapid growth for the past seven years holds significant business value to customers, partners and open source communities.

In keeping with its 25-year history, it intends to remain committed to an open source development and business model and actively participate in communities and projects to bring open source innovation to the enterprise as high quality, reliable and usable solutions.

This truly open, open source model, where open refers to the freedom of choice provided to customers and not just our code, is embedded in the company's culture, differentiates it in the marketplace and has been key to its success.

SUSE and EQT intend for its' strong leadership, focus on customer success and ability to partner successfully to remain in place as SUSE enters this next evolution of the business.