SUSE to Acquire Rancher Labs, Creating World’s Largest Organization Exclusively Dedicated to Powering Digital Transformation With Open Source and Cloud Native Solutions

Today, SUSE embarks on a new chapter in our incredible 28-year journey. I am thrilled to share that, SUSE has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Rancher Labs, a market-leading, Enterprise Kubernetes Management vendor based in Cupertino, California.    

This is an incredible moment for SUSE and for our industry, as two open source leaders join forces to create the world’s largest independent organization dedicated exclusively to powering digital transformation with open source and cloud native solutions. 

I want to share my perspective on why we chose Rancher, and how this acquisition will benefit our customers, partners, and communities.  

Why Rancher? 
Rancher provides a market–leading Enterprise Kubernetes Management platform and enables computing everywhere with seamless deployment of containerized workloads from the core to the edge to the cloud. Like SUSE, Rancher is 100% open source and equally as passionate as SUSE about true open source innovation, community empowerment, and customer success. SUSE and Rancher share the same goal – happy and satisfied customers. 

By combining Rancher’s strength in Containers with our strengths in Enterprise Linux, Edge Computing, and AI, we will redefine and jointly disrupt the market to help customers accelerate their digital transformation journeys with true open source solutions. There is no doubt in my mind, with our first acquisition as an independent company, we are paving the way for two leading companies with so many complementary strengths to become even stronger together. 

What does this mean for SUSE and Rancher’s customers and partners? 
Following the receipt of all necessary regulatory and antitrust approvals and the acquisition’s closing, customers and partners from both companies will benefit from the following:  

• A much broader best-in-class product portfolio and the vastly increased innovation power and global presence of the combined companies.  
• Rancher’s 100% open source solutions means we will continue to meet our customers where they are on their digital transformation journey – defined by what success looks like to them – while continuing our promise of no vendor lock-in. 

• Future versions of SUSE’s CaaS Platform will be based on the innovative capabilities provided by Rancher, and we’ll ensure efforts to upgrade CaaS Platform are as smooth as possible. 
• This combination is also a huge win for SUSE’s global partner ecosystem who will now be able to provide an even broader range of solutions to their customers with both Rancher and joint solutions.  
• SUSE and Rancher’s developers will jointly collaborate on innovative open source solutions and projects to accelerate the pace of innovation and bring better choice to the market benefiting both customers and partners, and our communities.  

I am joined in our philosophy of growth and innovation by Rancher and its CEO – you can read Sheng Liang’s blog for his take on this acquisition.

What does this mean for the open source community?  

From day one, both SUSE and Rancher have had a shared commitment to providing 100% true open source innovations to their customers around the world. Just as SUSE was founded by the Power of Many, Rancher’s heritage is deeply rooted in the ethos of the open source community.  

SUSE’s commitment to the open source community remains as strong today as it was 28 years ago.  Rancher will continue its strategy to be open and support multiple Kubernetes distributions and operating systems including any Cloud Native Computing Foundation-certified Kubernetes distribution including Google GKE, Amazon EKS, and Microsoft AKS, as well as projects like Gardener.  

What are the next steps? 
We anticipate the acquisition to close before the end of October 2020, subject to customary closing conditions including the receipt of regulatory approvals. During the regulatory period, that is prior to closing, SUSE and Rancher will continue to operate independently. Until closing, it is business as usual for SUSE and Rancher. After closing, we will be able to share more details on our product integration plans and various partner and community program plans.  

If you have any questions, I encourage you to reach out to your SUSE account representative.     

I know SUSE’s next chapter, which will include Rancher, will drive an abundance of value for our customers, partners, and communities. Together we are stronger, and we will be unstoppable.  

Be sure to check out what industry analysts are saying in this IDC report and 451 Research report.