SUSE Linux has been sold

SUSE, the open source software company owned by British firm Micro Focus International, has been sold to a Swedish private equity firm.

Yes, SUSE Linux and its associated software business has finally been acquired by EQT Partners for $2.535 billion, lifting its shares 6 percent.

SUSE is one of the oldest open source companies and perhaps the first to provide enterprise-grade Linux software service to banks, universities and government agencies around the world.

Since its foundation in 1992, SUSE has changed ownership multiple times. US-based software company Novell acquired SUSE for $120 million in November 2003 to compete with Microsoft in the operating system market.

However, things did not work as the company thought and Novell in turn itself was acquired by another US-based company The Attachmate Group for $2.2 billion in 2011. Three years later, Micro Focus International acquired Attachmate for $2.35 billion in 2014.

Since then SUSE Linux has been part of Micro Focus as a semi-independent division and competing with Red Hat and Ubuntu in the corporate market for open-source operating systems software.

Now, EQT Partners has announced to be the new owner of SUSE and plans to run it as an independent company to strengthen the products with developers and engineers.

Heres what Johannes Reichel from EGT said about the deal: “Investment into engineers was somewhat restricted under prior ownership. That will change. Against the backdrop of increasing trade conflicts, corporate customers appreciate an infrastructure software supplier with European origins.”