On Tuesday, 23 July 2019, Melissa Di Donato is named Chief Executive officer of SUSE, effective 5 August 2019. This move is said to herald the next phase of growth and momentum for the independent open-source software company.
Di Donato has a proven track record in sales, business operations and leadership focused on high growth and transformation. Prior to SUSE, Di Donato was chief operating officer and chief revenue officer at SAP where she was responsible for the worldwide revenue, profit and customer satisfaction of the company’s digital core solutions.
She also held senior executive positions at Salesforce and was recognised for her contributions to growing global organisations by winning the 2018 Digital Masters Award for Excellence in Commercial Management.
Di Donato will be SUSE’s first female CEO.
“There is no greater honour than to lead SUSE into its next chapter of accelerated growth and corporate development,” says Di Donato. “SUSE is at the cusp of a historic shift as open-source software is now a critical part of any thriving enterprise’s core business strategy. We are well-positioned to emerge as the clear leader of this shift, with our ability to power digital transformation for our customers at their own pace and with agile, enterprise-grade open source solutions, edge to core to cloud.”
“What is unmistakable is our unlimited ability to deliver value to our community, customers, partners and shareholders – all of whom have been the bedrock of SUSE’s success. As exciting as SUSE’s growth and innovation have been over the past several years, we are just getting started.”
Di Donato succeeds Nils Brauckmann, who has announced his retirement. During his tenure as CEO of SUSE, Brauckmann delivered eight years of continuous expansion including a substantial increase during FY18, a year which saw record-breaking revenues.
“I am incredibly proud of SUSE’s progress and growth over the last eight years, which has culminated in it securing independent status,” says Brauckmann. “With this chapter of SUSE’s corporate development complete, I could not be more pleased to hand off the leadership of SUSE to Melissa. She is a proven and dynamic change agent, and many of her achievements have occurred in subscription businesses that exist in high-growth cloud environments. Melissa is someone I am confident will lead SUSE to realise its fullest potential.”
Edited by Jenna Cook
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