As a private company, SUSE did not provide any dollar figures but said its annual contract value had increased by 30% year-on-year. Regional ACV bookings in the Asia-Pacific region and Japan grew by 29% despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the company said in a statement.

Other highlights of the quarter included:

• a 63% increase in customer deals worth more than $1 million;
• a 31% increase in renewals ACV bookings; and
• a 70% increase in cloud revenue as the company expands its cloud service provider network, adding partners including Britehouse, Exoscale, Magic Cloud, Nordicmind and Pedab.

The company said noteworthy new contracts included the US Army and Air Force Exchange Service and international automotive software company Elektrobit.

During the lockdown, SUSE said it had worked with customers to help their employees work from home. Medical device makers were offered free programs to speed up digital transformation and free online trainer was offered to customer IT staff.

“Unprecedented times trigger collaboration where communities come together to innovate for the greater good,” said SUSE chief executive Melissa Di Donato.

“SUSE, like many others, has been impacted by recent world events, and we are extremely grateful for the strength of our company and employees, our innovative, impact-delivering technologies, and our loyal customers, all of which have put us in the position to provide help and support to others.”

SUSE technology is also being used by a number of organisations to benefit the public.

One of these is the Tokyo Institute of Technology that provides a “supercomputers for everyone” project to help academia and also external businesses and research institutions, enabling them to research areas such as medicine, social phenomenon analysis and even earthquake warnings.

A second case is that of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, a leading centre for research and education in public and global health, which is enabling worldwide research, collaboration and guidance to those responding to COVID-19 outbreaks around the world.

The company behind the oldest Linux distribution, SUSE was first bought by Novell in 2003. It was then acquired by Attachmate in 2010 and taken private, when the company bought Novell.

In 2014, Micro Focus acquired SUSE from Attachmate along with the other properties that were part of Novell. The amount that Micro Focus earned from the SUSE sale — US$2.535 billion — was more than what it paid for Attachmate as a whole – US$2.35 billion.

In July 2018, SUSE was acquired by its fourth and current owner — Swedish growth investor EQT — and the sale was closed in March the following year.