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There are a number of articles, blogs and social media posts out with headlines like ‘SUSE’s been bought by HPE.’ Clearly, this is a misunderstanding of what was announced last week but once a meme is out there, others often follow and echo without checking out the source information carefully.

So, lets clear things up by calling out some of the facts:

What happened?

SUSE’s parent company Micro Focus announced its intent to merge with HPE’s Software Business Segment, a newly formed company holding HPE’s IT Management, Enterprise Security, Information Management & Governance, and Big Data Analytics software assets. This transaction would be expected to close Q3 2017 pending clearances and approvals.

If you read HPE’s news release you’ll see that after the proposed transaction, HPE shareholders would own 50.1% of the future Micro Focus shares.

HPE, the company, would have no ownership in Micro Focus, would not control Micro Focus and would receive no ongoing revenue or profits from Micro Focus as a result of the merger of Micro Focus and HPE’s software business.

The combined company would continue to be led by Kevin Loosemore, executive chairman of Micro Focus, and Mike Phillips as CFO.

And for SUSE?

HPE would not be acquiring Micro Focus or SUSE with this proposed transaction. SUSE ownership would be unchanged. SUSE would remain a business within the Micro Focus company and Micro Focus will remain independent of HPE. SUSE would not be owned in any way or controlled by HPE.

SUSE would obviously continue to be a key part of the new, larger Micro Focus organization just as it is a key part of Micro Focus today. So no change there, either. And the SUSE leadership team, business strategy and goals all remain unchanged and completely focused on continuing to deliver and support the enterprise-grade open source solutions.

The SUSE and HPE Partnership

As part of the transaction, Micro Focus and HPE intend to enter into a commercial partnership naming SUSE as HPE’s preferred Linux partner as well as exploring additional collaboration leveraging SUSE’s OpenStack expertise for joint innovation around HPE’s Helion OpenStack and Stackato Platform-as-a-Service solutions. SUSE and HPE are working together to define the specifics of the commercial partnership and expect to reach closure in Q4 CY 2016.

Naturally, SUSE will also continue to develop strategic commercial partnerships across our entire ecosystem of highly valued hardware and software partners.

In Conclusion

I hope those key facts help clarify last week’s announcements.

Look for more to be shared at SUSECON, our global end-user conference to be held Nov. 7-11 in Washington, D.C.

If you have any questions, please feel free to write to us at susesmart@suse.com.

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