Linux distributor SUSE plans to celebrate its 20th anniversary with a series of global events commemorating key technology, corporate and community milestones.
SUSE is
celebrating its 20th anniversary with a yearlong campaign highlighting the
company's history and future.
The longtime
provider of enterprise Linux solutions will showcase major historical
milestones and discuss plans for the future through a series of worldwide
events that will include SUSECon 2012, the premier event for SUSE
customers, partners and enthusiasts. The companys roots go back to the fall of
1992.
"We have
a lot to celebrate in 2012," Nils Brauckmann, president and general
manager of SUSE, said in a statement. "SUSE today is the recognized
market leader in several important segments, and is well-positioned
to take advantage of an ever-expanding market for commercial Linux and open-source
technologies. We plan to recognize the people, the events and the technological
developments that have helped bring us to where we are today."
SUSE plans to
roll out information and activities highlighting how the company has evolved
from its early beginnings in the open-source industry, to forging partnerships
with some of the world's leading technology vendors to deliver innovation,
investment protection and enterprise-quality software infrastructure to a
generation of customers.
In September
1992, three German university math students and a recently graduated software
engineer formed a company to develop software and function as an advisory Unix
group. Seeing the potential of Linux, the team decided to distribute Linux
operating systems and offer support services. It chose the name
"S.u.S.E," using an acronym for a German term that meant software and
systems development. The name was eventually shortened to "SUSE."
In 1999, SUSE
forged a partnership with IBM that spawned several other
projects, including a joint effort to port Linux code to the mainframe. A year
later, SUSE was the only company to offer a Linux operating system for IBM
mainframes that was enterprise-ready and commercially supported, SUSE officials
said. Around the same time, SUSE partnered with SAP's LinuxLab, eventually
becoming the first Linux provider to be designated a "SAP Global Technology Partner," the
company said.
Meanwhile, in
2006, SUSE signed a landmark business and technical collaboration agreement
with Microsoft that led to a joint research facility
for improving Linux interoperability with Microsoft Windows. Today, the
partnership continues to help customers maximize utilization and minimize the
costs of managing their heterogeneous, mixed IT environments. And SUSE
continues to maintain active partnerships with other established global
technology leaders such as AMD, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, Oracle and VMware that
have resulted in helping customers solve today's incredibly complex IT
challenges.
SUSE product
milestones begin with the 1994 shipment of the companys first Linux
distributionS.u.S.E Linux 1.0. Its next significant product followed in 1996
with the release of S.u.S.E. Linux 4.2, the first version to be developed
completely by SUSE, rather than simply translated. In 2000, SUSE introduced SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server, a server operating system targeting corporate users.
SUSE officials said it was the first globally distributed, fully supported
Linux server operating system for enterprise production environments.
Other notable
product introductions include SUSE Studio, an appliance and application image
creation tool launched in 2009. SUSE
Manager, the company's Linux Server management solution, launched in
2011. And most recently, SUSE debuted its OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure solution.
A stalwart of
the open-source community, SUSE has long served and contributed to a large
number of open-source projects and partnerships. Perhaps the biggest is the openSUSE project,
which was established in 2005. Commercially supported Linux software from SUSE
had always been developed and distributed under open-source models and
licenses, but openSUSE further opened up development processes, allowing
programmers and users to test and help contribute toward the development of its
community and commercial versions, SUSE officials said.
Meanwhile,
regarding its corporate milestones, in its 20-year history, SUSE has undergone
two notable ownership changes. SuSE Linux AG was acquired by Novell Inc. in
early 2004. Seven years later, Novell was acquired by The Attachmate Group,
which reestablished SUSE as an autonomous business unit.
During its two
decades in existence, SUSE has brought the power of Linux to a wide variety of
customers, including the London Stock Exchange, BMW, Walgreen's, SONY, Sesame Workshop and Office Depot. Indeed, SUSE Linux Enterprise Linux
powers all manner of mission-critical IT systems, from high-volume market data
and trading, to manufacturing and production, to e-commerce and air traffic
control, just to name a few.
"We have
a rich history as a Linux pioneer, said Hubert Mantel, an original founder of
SUSE, in a statement. We're proud to be part of the open-source community and
long-serving contributors to Linux. Celebrating our 20th anniversary provides
an opportunity to reflect upon our history and share our visions for the
future. The possibilities for SUSE today are more exciting than ever. Perhaps
even more exciting than when we started 20 years ago."
To commemorate
its achievements of the last 20 years, SUSE will host a series of events
worldwide culminating in SUSECon 2012, September 18-21 at the Caribe Royale
Hotel in Orlando, Fla.
Darryl K. Taft covers the development tools and developer-related issues beat from his office in Baltimore. He has more than 10 years of experience in the business and is always looking for the next scoop. Taft is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and was named 'one of the most active middleware reporters in the world' by The Middleware Co. He also has his own card in the 'Who's Who in Enterprise Java' deck.
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