Rancher Labs is a privately held company that provides a Kubernetes management platform. SUSE is one of the largest independent open source companies. Put these two together and you have the makings for an incredible moment in IT history.

Melissa Di Donato, SUSE CEO said of this definitive agreement. "Only the combination of SUSE and Rancher will have the depth of a globally supported and 100% true open source portfolio, including cloud native technologies, to help our customers seamlessly innovate across their business from the edge to the core to the cloud."

Unlike other solutions, the SUSE/Rancher Labs combination will remain fully open source. And with cloud-native application adoption continuing to grow exponentially, this marriage of one powerhouse and an up-and-coming star should be a game-changer. With SUSE being a global leader in Enterprise Linux, Edge Computing, and AI and Rancher already being established as a leader in Kubernetes container management, this acquisition will deliver "computing everywhere" with the latest AI and containerized workloads.

Of this combination, Sheng Liang, Rancher CEO, says "Our leading Kubernetes platform with SUSE's broad open source software solutions creates a powerful combination, enabling IT and Operations leaders worldwide to best meet the needs of their customers wherever they are on their digital transformation journey from the data center to cloud to edge."

The acquisition of Rancher is the first step in SUSE's planned expansion strategy since becoming a fully independent software company in March 2019. 

It is rumored that SUSE is paying at least $600 Million to acquire Rancher labs. The deal should close around October, 2020.

Source: https://rancher.com/blog/2020/suse-to-acquire-rancher/