SUSE today announced its plans to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary with a year-long campaign highlighting the company's history and future. The long-time provider of enterprise Linux solutions will showcase major historical milestones and discuss plans for the future through a series of worldwide events that will include SUSECon 2012, the premier event for SUSE customers, partners and enthusiasts.
"We have a lot to celebrate in 2012," said Nils Brauckmann, president and general manager, SUSE. "SUSE today is the recognized market leader in several important segments, and is well positioned to take advantage of an ever expanding market for commercial Linux and open source technologies. We plan to recognize the people, the events and the technological developments that have helped bring us to where we are today."
SUSE plans to roll out information and activities highlighting how the company has evolved from its early beginnings in the open source industry, to forging partnerships with the world's leading technology vendors in order to deliver innovation, investment protection and affordable enterprise-quality software infrastructure to a generation of customers.
SUSE's roots date back to September 1992, when three German university math students and a recently graduated software engineer formed a company to develop software and function as an advisory UNIX group. Seeing the potential of Linux, the team decided to distribute Linux operating systems and offer support services. It chose the name "S.u.S.E," using an acronym for a German term that meant software and systems development. The name was eventually shortened to "SUSE."
The company has accomplished significant milestones over its 20 years of business, including:
Alliance Milestones
SUSE's history has been characterized by having strong industry partnerships that continue to thrive today. In 1999 it forged a partnership with IBM, which led to a number of forward-looking projects - most notably, joint cooperation to port Linux code to the mainframe. A year later, SUSE was the only company to offer a Linux operating system for IBM mainframes that was enterprise-ready and commercially supported. Around the same time, SUSE partnered with SAP's LinuxLab, eventually becoming the first Linux provider to be designated a "SAP Global Technology Partner."
In 2006, a landmark business and technical collaboration agreement with Microsoft led to a joint research facility for improving Linux interoperability with Microsoft Windows. Today, the partnership continues to help customers maximize utilization and minimize the costs of managing their heterogeneous, mixed IT environments. SUSE continues to maintain active partnerships with other established global technology leaders such as AMD, Dell Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Oracle and VMware that have resulted in helping customers solve today's incredibly complex IT challenges.
Product Milestones
In 1994 SUSE shipped its first Linux distribution - S.u.S.E Linux 1.0. Its next significant product followed in 1996 with the release of S.u.S.E. Linux 4.2, the first version to be developed completely by SUSE, rather than simply translated. In 2000, SUSE introduced SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server, a server operating system targeting corporate users - the first globally distributed, fully supported Linux server operating system for enterprise production environments.
Other notable product introductions include SUSE Studio, an award-winning appliance and application image creation tool launched in 2009. SUSE Manager, the company's comprehensive Linux Server management solution, launched in 2011. And most recently, SUSE debuted its OpenStack*-powered cloud infrastructure solution.
Community Milestones
SUSE has long-served and contributed to a large number of open source community projects and partnerships. One of the biggest and most influential is the openSUSE® project, which was established in 2005. Commercially supported Linux software from SUSE had always been developed and distributed under open source models and licenses, but openSUSE further opened up development processes, allowing programmers and users to test and help contribute towards the development of its community and commercial versions.
Corporate Milestones
In its 20-year history, SUSE has undergone two notable ownership changes. SuSE Linux AG was acquired by Novell Inc. in early 2004. Seven years later, Novell was acquired by The Attachmate Group, which reestablished SUSE as an autonomous business unit focused on engineering excellence, smart innovation, and enduring customer and partner relationships.
For two decades, SUSE has brought the power of Linux to a wide variety of customers, including the London Stock Exchange, BMW, Walgreen's, SONY, Sesame Workshop, and Office Depot. Many customers trust SUSE Linux Enterprise to deliver a diverse range of core, mission-critical IT services, from high volume market data and trading, to manufacturing and production, to e-commerce and air traffic control, just to name a few.
"We have a rich history as a Linux pioneer. We're proud to be part of the open source community and long-serving contributors to Linux," said Hubert Mantel, an original founder of SUSE. "Celebrating our 20th anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect upon our history and share our visions for the future. The possibilities for SUSE today are more exciting than ever. Perhaps even more exciting than when we started 20 years ago."
In honor of its achievements over the last 20 years, SUSE will host a series of events worldwide including SUSECon 2012, September 18-21 at the Caribe Royale Hotel in Orlando, Florida.
About SUSE
SUSE is a leading provider of enterprise Linux solutions that help companies increase agility, reduce cost and manage complexity. With a portfolio centered on SUSE Linux Enterprise, the most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing, SUSE enables organizations to confidently deliver computing services across physical, virtual and cloud environments. With our award-winning products and ecosystem of partnerships, SUSE solutions empower thousands of organizations around the world. For more information, visit us at suse.com.
Copyright © 2012 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved. SUSE and openSUSE are registered trademarks and SUSE Studio is a trademark of Novell Inc. in the United States and other countries. *All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.