SUSE Builds Momentum with Innovative Open Source Offerings, Revenue Growth and Commitment to Enterprise Customers

SUSE poised to establish itself as a stand-alone company pending its acquisition by growth investor EQT

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Aug 29, 2018, 08:30 ET

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Aug. 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- (Open Source Summit) -- SUSE® is an open source pioneer that has provided enterprise-grade software to tens of thousands of organizations for more than 25 years. As SUSE prepares to embark upon its next phase of corporate development as a stand-alone company*, it continues to grow and build momentum with its core products, emerging solutions, communities and partners while expanding its presence in new market segments. SUSE is better positioned than ever before to shepherd enterprises through the demands of digital transformation with open source innovation and expertise in software-defined infrastructure, application delivery and cloud technologies.

"SUSE has thrived for decades by following two simple principles – listen to the customer, and embrace innovation and change on their behalf," said Nils Brauckmann, CEO of SUSE. "SUSE is on a growth trajectory, expanding both organically and through technology acquisition. This 'build-and-buy' expansion model creates continuous value for customers and drives sustainable growth for both the top and bottom lines of the business. As the business grows, SUSE remains committed to being the open, open source company, where open refers to the freedom of choice provided to customers and not just our code."

SUSE's investment in flexibility and its evolution from a Linux vendor to a cloud, software-defined infrastructure and application delivery solutions company has generated momentum and profitable growth as the organization continuously adapts to the requirements of partners and customers. As organizations face increasing pressure to become more agile and economically efficient in order to grow, compete and survive, they must leverage digital assets, information and an explosion of new software innovation to enable their digital transformation. SUSE builds from its Linux heritage and works with an ecosystem of partners and communities to adapt and secure open source solutions backed by superior service and support. These emerging infrastructure technologies are built on open source and Linux, and they create new levels of freedom and flexibility for customers.

Jay Lyman, principal analyst for 451 Research, said, "Over the past few years, SUSE has expanded its portfolio into new areas, such as storage, cloud, containers and application delivery. With new independence and backing from Swedish private equity (PE) firm EQT Partners, SUSE is answering market demand for a neutral, yet comprehensive hybrid cloud platform that supports multiple public and private clouds as well as on-premises infrastructure integration with software such as its SUSE Linux Enterprise 15."

SUSE's leadership in established and emerging markets is evident globally, as its customers include nine of the 10 largest aerospace companies worldwide, 10 of the world's largest automotive manufacturers, four of the five largest banks in the world, half of the world's largest supercomputers, and 80 percent of the Fortune Global 50. In addition, 70 percent of all SAP applications running on Linux run on SUSE Linux Enterprise, including more than 90 percent of SAP HANA deployments. SUSE created and has led the mainframe Linux market for more than 17 years.

Kathy Bennett, vice president, IBM Systems ISV Ecosystem Technical Development & Support, said, "As founding members of the Linux Foundation, IBM continues working with SUSE on key open source initiatives including bringing SUSE Linux Enterprise Server forward as a fully supported, enterprise-grade operating system optimized for IBM platforms including IBM Z, LinuxOne and Power Systems. Our work together for supporting SAP HANA on IBM Power Systems, KVM on the Z architecture, IBMz/VM support and integration with cloud and container-based technologies is accelerating customer adoption of open source platforms."

Scott Farrand, vice president, Hybrid IT-Platform Software at HPE, said, "At HPE, we are committed to strengthening open source and open standards initiatives across the industry and have been leading efforts in the space, with a special focus on Linux, for more than 15 years. Our ongoing collaboration with SUSE on Linux, OpenStack and other projects drives our joint efforts to deliver valuable open source-based solutions to the market."

Other milestones charting SUSE business momentum include:

For the six months ending April 30, 2018, SUSE saw revenues of $182.9 million, which represents continued growth of approximately 17 percent over the same period in the previous year. Adjusted EBITDA for that period was $56 million, nearly 23 percent year-over-year growth.
Since August 2017, SUSE's employee base has grown nearly 20 percent to approximately 1,400 employees today, as the company has invested heavily in its engineering and customer services organizations.
New and innovative software-defined infrastructure and application delivery solutions introduced by SUSE this year include SUSE CaaS Platform 3 with Kubernetes management of Container-as-a-Service applications, SUSE Cloud Application Platform to manage cloud native Platform-as-a-Service applications via Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes technologies, SUSE OpenStack Cloud 8 for production-ready private clouds, SUSE Enterprise Storage 5 for software-defined enterprise storage, SUSE Manager 3.2 for infrastructure management, and the SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 family of platform solutions.
SUSE has expanded partnerships with leading public cloud providers including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Since 2013, more than 10,700 partner applications and 7,600 hardware systems have been certified to run with SUSE software.
To ensure quality service and customer engagement, more than half of SUSE employees are focused on development and support. Ninety percent of SUSE customers are satisfied with their experience with SUSE engineers, and two-thirds of SUSE customers rate SUSE engineers with a perfect score.
SUSE's commitment to open source software and communities continues to grow, with the company currently engaged with more than 100 open source projects. A founding member of more than 10 open source organizations, SUSE has board representation on many, including the OpenStack Foundation, Linux Foundation, Cloud Foundry Foundation, CNCF, OPNFV (Linux Foundation Networking umbrella project), Open Mainframe and OpenHPC.

"SUSE has been an active, productive and open member of The Linux Foundation since before I got involved in 2006," said Dan Kohn, executive director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. "With CNCF, I'm particularly appreciative of their early engagement in what has become the Certified Kubernetes program, and their ongoing commitment to bringing innovation and interoperability to the enterprise as high-quality, reliable and usable solutions."

About SUSE
SUSE, a pioneer in open source software, provides reliable, software-defined infrastructure and application delivery solutions that give enterprises greater control and flexibility. More than 25 years of engineering excellence, exceptional service and an unrivaled partner ecosystem power the products and support that help our customers manage complexity, reduce cost, and confidently deliver mission-critical services. The lasting relationships we build allow us to adapt and deliver the smarter innovation they need to succeed – today and tomorrow. For more information, visit www.suse.com.

*Following last week's shareholder approval of Micro Focus' proposed sale of SUSE to EQT Partners for $2.535 billion, the transaction is expected to complete in the first quarter of calendar 2019, subject to customary regulatory approvals.

Copyright 2018 SUSE LLC. All rights reserved. SUSE and the SUSE logo are registered trademarks of SUSE LLC in the United States and other countries. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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