SUSE Enters Into Definitive Agreement to Acquire Rancher Labs

I’m excited to announce that Rancher has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by SUSE. Rancher is the most widely used enterprise Kubernetes platform. SUSE is the largest independent open source software company and a leader in enterprise Linux. By combining Rancher and SUSE, we not only gain massive engineering resources to further strengthen our market-leading product, we are also able to preserve our unique 100% open source business model.

We started Rancher 6 years ago to develop the next generation enterprise computing platform built on a relatively new technology called containers. We could not have anticipated the tremendous growth and popularity of the Kubernetes technology. Rancher was able to thrive in this exciting and highly dynamic market because we developed innovative products loved by end users. Grass-roots adoption coupled with a unique enterprise-grade support subscription led to our hypergrowth. I want to thank everyone who has used our products over these last six years for your support, and for helping us build an amazing community of users.

After the acquisition closes later this year, I will lead the combined engineering and innovation organization at SUSE. You can expect an accelerated pace of product innovation. And given SUSE’s 28-year history building a highly successful open source business, our commitment to open source will remain strong.

The acquisition is great for Rancher customers and partners. At Rancher we take pride in our industry-leading customer satisfaction with an NPS score of over 80. SUSE’s global reach and enterprise focus will further strengthen our commitment to customers who rely on Rancher to power mission-critical workloads. Likewise, SUSE’s strong ecosystem will greatly accelerate Rancher’s on-going efforts to transform how organizations adopt cloud native technology.

This acquisition is a launch point for further growth of Rancher. I feel as invigorated as day-1 about the industry, the technology, and our business. I am so proud of our team and the work they have done these last six years, and I look forward to continuing to work with our users, customers, partners, and fellow Ranchers to build a truly amazing business by leveraging the best parts of Rancher and SUSE. Rancher and SUSE together will be the enterprise computing company that transforms our industry.