Rancher Acquisition May Make SUSE a Kubernetes and Hybrid Cloud Powerhouse

In 2018, however, after it gained independence via acquisition by the Stockholm-based private equity investor EQT Partners -- just months before Red Hat lost its independence by selling to IBM -- things started turning around for SUSE. It's been redefining itself in an apparent effort to differentiate from competitors, primarily from Red Hat, a fellow enterprise Linux distro giant, but also from VMware and the big public clouds.