Out with the SAPper, in with a Hatter: Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen will take over at SUSE Could 1st. Chief monetary officer Andy Myers is interim CEO till the top of April.
New boss van Leeuwen is an ex-Crimson Hatter. He joined the then-independent biz in 2004 and ended up as senior Vice President and Normal Supervisor of North America, weathering the IBM acquisition that created Big Purple 4 years in the past. Maybe getting his personal interview in CEO Journal gave him a style for the job title.
When he takes over as head chameleon-wrangler originally of April, he’ll substitute the outgoing – in each senses of the phrase – Melissa di Donato, a former SAP executive who took over in 2019.
Di Donato led SUSE for some 4 years after changing Nils Brauckmann, who oversaw SUSE breaking away from parent company MicroFocus in 2018. Her keep was notable for 2 important strikes: the 2020 acquisition of Rancher Labs, and an profitable, if less than stellar IPO on the Frankfurt inventory alternate. SUSE additionally acquired container security startup NeuVector and open sourced it, releasing version 5.0 last year, though that was a moderately smaller deal.
Dutchman van Leeuwen appears to be a long-term Unix sort. From 1996 to 2000, he ran gross sales in Benelux and the Nordic international locations for the Santa Cruz Operation. Do not get scared – that was the good SCO. Van Leeuwen left in September 2000, only a month after Caldera acquired the company. This was a few years earlier than Caldera changed its name to SCO and began its legendary sue-stravaganza in a future of Unix-linked disputes.
He then moved to Berkeley Software program Design Inc, higher referred to as BSDI, quickly after its merger with Walnut Creek, the place he headed gross sales in central Europe, a area he’d be taking care of once more for Crimson Hat just a few years later. The merger and tried IPO did not work out, and shortly afterwards BSDI jettisoned its server business as iXsystems, now in all probability higher recognized for its TrueNAS product range.
Van Leeuwen left BSDI quickly afterwards. So, he appears to have some expertise of bailing out of Unixy companies earlier than they hit stormy waters. It is nearly sufficient to make us fear concerning the Huge Purple Hat.
Within the hole between Di Donato’s departure and Van Leeuwen choosing up the reins, the present chief monetary officer, Andrew Myers, would be the interim CEO. ®
