Micro Focus (LSE: MCRO.L) announced today its intent to merge with HPE's Software Business Segment in a transaction valued at approximately $8.8 billion. The merger is subject to customary closing conditions, including anti-trust clearances and shareholder approval and is expected to close in Q3 2017. Micro Focus and HPE also announced as part of the transaction the intent to enter into a commercial partnership naming SUSE as HPE's preferred Linux partner.

The proposed merger brings together two well established enterprise software vendors with highly complementary portfolios. With revenues of approximately $4.5 billion, it creates one of the world's largest pure-play infrastructure software companies with a truly global footprint, agility and financial strength to drive software innovation across both traditional and emerging IT market segments.

"Today's announcement marks yet another significant milestone for Micro Focus and is wholly consistent with the long-term business strategy we have been pursuing to be the most disciplined global provider of infrastructure software. The proposed merger with HPE Software is consistent with our recent acquisitions of Serena Software and the Attachmate Group," said Kevin Loosemore, Executive Chairman, Micro Focus. "The combination of Micro Focus with HPE Software will give customers more choice as they seek to maximize the value of existing IT assets, leveraging their business logic and data along with next-generation technologies to innovate in new ways with the lowest possible risk."

Organizations continue to seek technology solutions that improve their time to market and create new avenues to further engender customer loyalty and improve employee productivity and more. HPE Software brings additional breadth and depth across IT Operations Management, Software Delivery & Test, Enterprise Security, Information Management & Governance and Big Data Analytics, giving Micro Focus additional advantage to deliver richer solutions that effectively bridge existing IT infrastructure with emerging technologies to meet those business demands.

"We believe that the software assets that will be a part of this combination will bring better value to both our customers and shareholders as part of a more focused software company committed to growing these businesses on a stand-alone basis," said Meg Whitman, President and Chief Executive Officer, HPE.

At the same time, Micro Focus and HPE have announced their intent to enter into a commercial partnership naming SUSE as HPE's preferred Linux partner as well as exploring additional collaboration leveraging SUSE's OpenStack expertise for joint innovation around HPE's Helion OpenStack and Stackato Platform-as-a-Service solutions. SUSE and HPE are working together to define the specifics of the commercial partnership.

"SUSE and HPE have a long history of successful strategic partnership," said Nils Brauckmann, CEO, SUSE. "We are excited now to explore new ways of expanding upon that with a commercial partnership focused on areas such as cloud computing, software-defined networking and application platforms. The combination of SUSE's open source expertise and OpenStack capabilities with HPE's Helion and Stackato offerings can create best-in-class enterprise solutions for our mutual customers."

About HPE

HPE is an industry leading technology company that enables customers to go further, faster. With the industry's most comprehensive portfolio, spanning the cloud to the data center to workplace applications, our technology and services help customers around the world make IT more efficient, more productive and more secure.

About Micro Focus

Micro Focus (LSE: MCRO.L) is a global enterprise software company helping customers innovate faster with lower risk. Our software helps customers build, operate and secure IT systems that bring together existing business logic and applications with emerging technologies to meet increasingly complex business demands. For more information, visit: www.microfocus.com.