Recently released SUSE which agreed to acquire Rancher Labs, a startup with technology that helps organizations run software in virtual containers on many servers.
The companies announced the deal recently but they did not disclose the terms and conditions about it. Two people familiar with the deal said SUSE would spend between $ 600 million and $ 700 million.
The conversations between the companies began a few months ago and the process has become competitive with additional offerings, said Ursheet Parikh, a partner at the Rancher Mayfield Fund donor. There have been "a lot of Zoom calls," he was quick to note.
In recent years, with the emergence of startups like Docker, containers have become an alternative fashionable to more traditional virtualization technology to run applications on every computer server in an enterprise data center.
Amazon, Microsoft, and other cloud providers have offered services that developers can use to put code into containers, and in 2017 SUSE introduced its own container management service. The companies have not finalized their integration plans, as the deal has yet to receive regulatory approval.
Rancher core software is based on Kubernetes container management software that Google released under an open source license in 2014.
It has been downloaded more than 100 million times, the company said in March, saying it observed annual revenue growth of 169% in 2019 without specifying a dollar amount. Rancher also offers its own small distribution of the Linux operating system.
Rancher's clients include American Express, Comcast, Deutsche Bahn, and Viasat.
In the world of Kubernetes, Amazon, Google and Microsoft have not grown as fast as more traditional information technology companies, said Rancher CEO Sheng Liang, who sold Cloud.com to Citrix in 2011. SUSE is the rare large open source company that does not operate on its own infrastructure cloud, Liang said, comparing it as an example to IBM's Red Hat.
“This is an incredible time for our industry as two open source leaders join forces. Merging an Enterprise Linux, Edge Computing and AI specialist with an Enterprise Kubernetes Management leader will disrupt the market to help clients accelerate their digital transformation journey.
This allows you to attract companies that do not want to be locked into a single cloud. In particular, some companies that compete with Amazon in retail and other areas, such as Walmart, are reluctant to use Amazon's cloud, even though it is the leader in the field.
In an email exchange, Sheng Liang, founder and CEO of Rancher Labs, welcomed the agreement and said:
"This acquisition is a starting point for Rancher's further growth." I feel as invigorated as the first day in the industry, technology and our business. I am very proud of our team and the work they have done over the past six years, and I look forward to continuing to work with our Rancher users, customers, partners and collaborators to build a truly incredible business, capitalizing on the best parts of Rancher and SUSE. Rancher and SUSE together will be the enterprise IT company that is transforming our industry. "
This acquisition of Rancher Labs is therefore the first step in the expansion from SUSE as EQT gave it its independence. Follow the strong budget dynamics of SUSE.
In its second quarter of fiscal 2020, SUSE experienced an annual contract value (ACV) bookings increase of 30%, while global cloud revenue increased by 70% over a year.
This deal is expected to close before the end of October 2020, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. It represents a huge step forward for SUSE in the Kubernetes arena.
If you want to know more about it, you can consult the statement In the following link.
It would be good if they explained in another section what role kubernetes and docker play respectively in relation to each other, including how it affects the way we see software distribution today through packages .deb, .rpm, snap, flatpack, appimage ... As well as what technology is better adapted to production, administrative-business and common user environments according to the benefits.