Watch your PaaS (and IaaS) – SUSE acquires OpenStack and Cloud Foundry technology from HPE

If you follow SUSE, you know we recently made our first technology acquisition—openATTIC—and announced it at our annual customer conference, SUSECON. At the time, I said there would likely be similar acquisitions when it makes sense for our growth strategy, as well as our open source development and business model.

Well, that time has come. And in a big way.

Today we announced a definitive agreement to acquire OpenStack IaaS and Cloud Foundry PaaS technology and talent from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). The transaction will be completed in the first quarter of next year and we’re already excited about the opportunities it will bring to SUSE, our customers, and our partners:

First, we will integrate the acquired OpenStack IaaS assets into our SUSE OpenStack Cloud product to create an even stronger, more feature-rich solution that addresses a greater variety of use cases and customer needs. As we do today, we will continue to sell SUSE OpenStack Cloud through a wide variety of partnerships and routes to market.

Second, we will leverage the Cloud Foundry PaaS assets to accelerate our 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.

Third, HPE will name SUSE as the preferred partner for Linux, OpenStack IaaS and Cloud Foundry PaaS. HPE will also OEM SUSE OpenStack Cloud and Cloud Foundry PaaS products and incorporate them into its Helion- and Stackato-branded solutions. This means HPE customers will gain the advantage of all the SUSE investment and continual innovation that goes into our Linux, OpenStack IaaS and Cloud Foundry PaaS products.

Finally, we are increasing our engagement with the Cloud Foundry Foundation from a Silver-level member to Platinum. Our SUSE CTO Thomas Di Giacomo is joining the Foundation’s board of directors, where he will represent the interests of SUSE customers, contribute our expertise to the Foundation’s work, and participate in setting the future direction and strategy of Cloud Foundry.

And most important: a team of highly talented open source engineers with valuable experience in areas such as OpenStack IaaS, Cloud Foundry PaaS, Docker Containers and Kubernetes will be joining SUSE once the transaction is complete. This addition to the SUSE development team means we can rapidly accelerate our product roadmaps and increase the pace and scope of innovation that we provide to our upstream communities and to our customers.

Keep watching SUSE in the weeks and months to come—even though we celebrate our 25^th birthday next year, we’re just getting started!