SUSE (company)
| SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH | |
|---|---|
| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | 1992 |
| Seat | Nuremberg |
| management | Melissa Di Donato (CEO) |
| Number of employees | 1750 (2019) |
| sales | 303.4 million USD (2017) |
| Branch | software |
| Website | www.suse.com |
The SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH is an international software company with headquarters in Nuremberg , whose main products are derselbigen the Linux distributions of the same name, and customer service. After several name changes, it is again an independent business unit , which the Swedish financial investor EQT Partners took over from Micro Focus .
Company history
In September 1992, Roland Dyroff, Burchard Steinbild, Hubert Mantel and Thomas Fehr founded the "Society for Software and System Development mbH". The name SuSE stood as an acronym for S oftware- u nd S ystem- E evelopment. As the first own Linux product, an extension of the Linux distribution Slackware was sold , which was delivered on 40 floppy disks. The company translated the distribution into German in cooperation with Slackware founder Patrick Volkerding . The core of the distribution, however, remained Slackware until SuSE published its first own distribution in May 1996, based on the Jurix distribution by Florian La Roche.
In 1997, SuSE opened an office in Oakland . In 1998 the headquarters were relocated from Fürth to Nuremberg ; in December 1998 the company name (company) was changed from SuSE to SuSE . In the course of the following time, SuSE opened a total of six national and four international (USA, Czech Republic, Great Britain and Italy) branches. On November 25, 2002 Richard Seibt became Managing Director of SuSE.
On November 4, 2003, Novell announced the takeover of SuSE LINUX AG at a price of 210 million US dollars. The transaction, through which Novell wanted to gain a stronger foothold in the operating system market, was completed on January 13, 2004 and went hand in hand with the renaming of SuSE LINUX AG into the corporate form SUSE Linux GmbH and SUSE Linux Products GmbH . The SUSE Linux Products GmbH performs all development work by and led by Markus Rex, who was also responsible for the entire Linux Business, Novell worldwide. During the takeover, both the partner and sales organizations were integrated into Novell. Richard Seibt became Novell's EMEA head. He left the company on May 9, 2005 without giving any reason.
In August 2005, the launch of the openSUSE community project began to open up the further development of SUSE Linux to external users and developers. Novell took a similar path as Red Hat did with the Fedora project. Novell's future Linux variants will then be developed with the help of the openSUSE community.
SUSE's headquarters were relocated from Nuremberg to Massachusetts in the USA after the takeover by Novell . In the course of the takeover of Novell by the Attachmate Group in 2011, the company headquarters was initially relocated to Nuremberg, but then moved again to Cambridge (Massachusetts) in the USA after the takeover by Micro Focus in 2014 . In the meantime, however, the company lists Nuremberg as the headquarters of its headquarters again.
Acquisitions
The SUSE Linux GmbH was a subsidiary of Novell , which was organizationally assigned to the Novell headquarters in the USA and not to the German Novell GmbH. The reason for this is that, as of December 2005, SUSE Linux employed 250 developers in Nuremberg, among others, who are involved in global product development that is controlled from the USA. The German Novell GmbH, on the other hand, is responsible for the distribution and marketing of Novell products, including SUSE Linux products, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In the course of the takeover of Novell by Attachmate in May 2011, SUSE was separated from Novell and spun off as a separate SUSE business unit .
After the acquisition of Attachmate by Micro Focus International in 2014, SUSE LLC remained independent under the new owner.
In July 2018, SUSE was sold to the Swedish investment group EQT Partners AB for $ 2.5 billion. The formal owner is a newly founded company "Marcel BidCo GmbH " based in Munich, meanwhile the Nuremberg SUSE address is given as the business address.
Products
The SUSE Linux version of the openSUSE project is intended for private customers and developers. It can either be freely downloaded from the project website or obtained via torrent .
The products for business customers include the server families with the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES for short). This is currently maintained in three versions: the older SLES 9 with a Linux 2.6.5 kernel , the SLES 10 Service Pack 4 with a 2.6.16 kernel and the SLES 11 Service Pack 3 with the 3.0 kernel. SLES 12 was completed in October 2014 and currently uses Kernel 4.4. SLES 15, released in 2018, uses kernel version 4.12. All variants are available for several processor architectures, including Intel x86, AMD x86-64, IBM Power, IBM S / 390 and zSeries, as well as Intel Itanium.
In the desktop family, the successor to SUSE Linux Desktop is Novell Linux Desktop (NLD for short). From version 10, which was released in summer 2006, the server and desktop are based on an identical code base , SUSE Linux Enterprise. This is also reflected in the name. The Novell Linux Desktop becomes the SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (“SLED”).
Until recently, the SUSE Linux Openexchange Server was used in the groupware segment. Linux solutions were offered by SUSE Framework Solutions.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Contacts & Offices Suse.com: Contact & Offices
- ↑ suse.com: Company History
- ↑ Melissa Di Donato becomes CEO of Suse. Retrieved February 3, 2020 .
- ^ The new SUSE. April 1, 2019, accessed January 30, 2020 .
- ↑ MicroFocus preliminary results 2017. Retrieved October 29, 2018 .
- ↑ iX: Linux and open source specialist SUSE again independent. Heise Verlag, accessed on July 2, 2018 (German).
- ↑ heise online: SUSE takeover by investor EQT completed. Retrieved March 18, 2019 .
- ^ History - SUSE. In: suse.com. Accessed February 16, 2015 .
- ↑ Novell swallows Suse Linux. In: handelsblatt.com . November 4, 2003, accessed February 16, 2015 .
- ↑ http://www.golem.de/1105/83155.html
- ↑ https://www.suse.com/company/legal/ ( Memento from March 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Novell takeover completed - heise open. In: heise.de. April 28, 2011, accessed February 16, 2015 .
- ↑ Extensive layoffs at Novell and Suse - heise open. In: heise.de. May 3, 2011, accessed February 16, 2015 .
- ↑ Heise News: Suse and Opensuse: No changes despite the takeover of Attachmate (accessed on June 30, 2015)
- ↑ heise online: SUSE takeover by investor EQT completed. Retrieved June 18, 2019 .
- ↑ Micro Focus Announces Sale Of SUSE Business For $ 2,535 Bln - Quick Facts . In: RTTNews . ( rttnews.com [accessed July 3, 2018]).
- ↑ commercial register of lightning 18-679 GmbH of Munich (HRB 241711). Retrieved July 3, 2018 .
- ↑ software.opensuse.org. In: software.opensuse.org. Retrieved October 3, 2019 (German, English).
Coordinates: 49 ° 27 ′ 33 " N , 11 ° 4 ′ 56" E