Photos Courtesy of Swapnil Bhartiya

An interview with SUSE CEO Nils Brauckmann

SUSE, A Company on the Move

Article from ADMIN 42/2017

By Swapnil Bhartiya

This month we talk with SUSE CEO Nils Brauckmann.

Recently, I sat down to talk with SUSE CEO Nils Brauckmann, the man who has steered SUSE out of troubled water and toward success. My first question was: "Are you going to make your drumming debut at SUSECON?"

"We have [a] better drummer. In fact, the entire entertainment at this SUSECON is being provided by SUSE employees. You will see Ralf Flaxa, our President of Engineering, on keyboards," said Brauckmann.

For those who don't know the context, my little birds at SUSE have told me that Brauckmann is a very talented drummer, so every time I meet him, I ask whether he will have his drumming debut at SUSECON.

So far his answer has been no, but if there is enough public demand, we may see him perform.

Brief History of SUSE

SUSE, the oldest Linux company, celebrated their 25th anniversary in Prague, Czech Republic, at SUSECON 2017. SUSE was founded in 1992 a few months after Linus Torvalds announced the Linux kernel.

Over the past 25 years, SUSE has been through some challenging times. The company was acquired by Novell in 2003. To an outside observer, Novell struggled to maintain a balance between its own proprietary technologies and SUSE's open source technologies. As a result, SUSE didn't see the kind of success it should have enjoyed as Linux increased its footprint in the server space.

SUSE got a new lease on life and gained some independence when Novell was acquired by Attachmate Group in 2011. Nils Brauckmann and his team, which included Michael Miller, President of Strategy, Alliances, and Marketing, took the helm of the SUSE brand and product portfolio. Brauckmann kept the company on the right track, but SUSE needed financial resources to reach its full potential.

Things took an interesting turn when Micro Focus, a relatively lesser known company, decided to merge in 2015 with Attachmate. Micro Focus offered much needed financial

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