Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has agreed to sell some of its open source software assets to Suse, a German software company best known for its enterprise distribution of Linux.

Under the terms of the deal, Suse will receive the technology and engineering talent that relates to OpenStack and Cloud Foundry projects.

As part of this agreement, HPE has named Suse as its preferred open source partner. In addition, Suse will become a platinum member of the Cloud Foundry Foundation and its CTO Thomas Di Giacomo will receive a seat on the board.

The transaction is expected to complete in the first quarter of 2017.

Division of labor

Suse mascot, a green chameleon
Suse mascot, a green chameleon – Thinkstock / GlobalP

Suse plans to integrate the acquired assets into Suse OpenStack Cloud, and the acquired Cloud Foundry assets will enable the company to build a certified PaaS solution.

In the future, HPE will be able to use features developed by Suse in its own Helion OpenStack and Stackato products.

“We are evolving our investment strategy to focus on developing the next generation of hybrid cloud solutions, which combines HPE technology with a broad ecosystem of open source and partner technologies that support traditional and cloud native applications,” said Ric Lewis, SVP and GM of Software-Defined and Cloud Group at HPE.

“Customers tell us they need simple hybrid offerings. By partnering with SUSE, HPE will continue to provide high quality OpenStack and Cloud Foundry PaaS solutions that are simple to deploy into customer’s multi-cloud environments.”

Abby Kearns, executive director of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, added: “Suse has been a powerful player in the enterprise open source world for more than two decades, and I’m excited to see the impact that a Suse Cloud Foundry distribution will have for enterprises and developers around the world. Suse’s strategic vision for the convergence of Platform-as-a-Service and Container-as-a-Service technologies will also be a welcome addition to the strategic dialogue we have within the Cloud Foundry Foundation community.”

Earlier this year, HPE spun off and merged ‘non-core’ software products with British software firm MicroFocus, in a deal valued at around $8.8 billion.