Miller (above), who was in Melbourne to address the SUSE Open Forum held in the city on the company's business and strategy, told iTWire this was in line with the thinking of the new owners, Micro Focus, who, he said, were taking a long-term view. The chief executive of Micro Focus, Kevin Loosemore, had expressed similar sentiments when interviewed by iTWire in November 2014.
SUSE currently has around 850 employees in 43 countries.
Micro Focus paid around $US2.3 billion in 2014 to buy the Attachmate Group, which at the time owned SUSE, among other assets. The deal was finalised in November and as a result SUSE is once again a public company, with Micro Focus being listed on the London Stock Exchange. Its financial year runs from 1 May to 30 April.
The Attachmate Group bought Novell and took the business private in November 2010. SUSE, which at the time was just about breaking even, was moved back to Nuremberg as an independent business unit. Since then, SUSE's fortunes have been on the rise, with profit margins of around 20 per cent on turnover of around $US250 million.
Miller said most of the increase woukd be technical staff but there would be sales appointments as well, given that Micro Focus was of the opinion that SUSE needed to be pushed out more.
Comparing the third quarter of the current financial year to the previous one, Miller said new bookings had gone up by 31 per cent and revenue by 15 per cent.
He also said SUSE's annual conference would be held in Amsterdam in November. The Dutch capital has been chosen since it is easily accessible from all regions; SUSE has staff all over the world, many of whom attend the annual SUSECon. The event was first held in 2012, with Orlando being the venue for the first three years.
Apart from Miller, the Forum was also addressed by IDC's ANZ research director Sally Parker, Microsoft's Adam Barker, SUSE Asia chief technologist Peter Lees, Lenovo technical consultant Serge Tolmachev, and SUSE systems engineer Rod Nash.
A similar forum will be held in Sydney on Thursday.
