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Suse buys HPE assets

Kgaogelo Letsebe
By Kgaogelo Letsebe, Portals journalist
Johannesburg, 10 Mar 2017
Nils Brauckmann, CEO of Suse.
Nils Brauckmann, CEO of Suse.

Suse announced that it has completed the acquisition of technology and talent from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

According to the company, the acquisition will expand its OpenStack infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS) solution and fast-track its entry into the Cloud Foundry Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS) market.

The company says the acquired OpenStack assets will be integrated into Suse's OpenStack Cloud, and the acquired cloud foundry and PAAS assets will enable it to offer a certified, enterprise-ready Cloud Foundry PAAS solution for all customers and partners in its eco-system. "The completion of this acquisition is one more important step in our ongoing growth and expansion strategy. It also demonstrates how we're building our business through a combination of organic growth and technology acquisitions," says Nils Brauckmann, CEO of Suse.

Brauckmann says there is a three-stage plan with regards to the integration of its ecosystem. First it will integrate the acquired OpenStack IAAS assets into Suse OpenStack Cloud product to create a more feature-rich solution that addresses a variety of use cases and customer needs.

Secondly, the company will leverage the Cloud Foundry PAAS assets to accelerate entry into the PAAS market and deliver a certified Cloud Foundry distribution. "PAAS is becoming a critical element of the software-defined infrastructure as enterprises and developers shift to cloud-native applications and Dev/Ops methodologies. Our vision is a convergence between the best of container and orchestration technologies like Docker and Kubernetes with the best of PAAS technologies like Cloud Foundry that will create innovation that matters to our enterprise customers and partners," he explained.

The last stage will include increasing the company's engagement with the Cloud Foundry Foundation from a silver-level member to platinum. "Our chief technology officer Thomas Di Giacomo is joining the foundation's board of directors, where he will represent the interests of our customers and participate in setting the future direction and strategy of Cloud Foundry."

As part of the transaction agreement, HPE named Suse as its preferred open source partner for Linux, OpenStack IAAS and Cloud Foundry PAAS.

This is one of the few acquisitions the open source enterprise platform provider has made recently. In November the company bought software-defined storage management assets from German IT firm It-novum, including openATTIC, the open source Ceph and storage management framework.

At the time of the acquisition, Suse said the purchase was meant to accelerate its use of openATTIC as the management framework for SUSE enterprise storage and will help the company deliver simpler, cost-effective enterprise storage management solutions. As part of the transaction, a team of highly skilled open source engineers from It-novum joined the Suse on a permanent basis.

Brauckmann concludes that the acquisitions are a sign of the company's increasing momentum, "For the first time, our business is expanding through both organic growth and technology acquisition," he noted.

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