Ximian

The annual report on employment in the open source sector released by the Linux and Dice Foundation is available. This report shows that opportunities are growing for qualified open source professionals.

The survey was conducted among more than 750 hiring managers and 6500 Open Source professionals. The summary of the conclusions of this report is very positive and shows some significant changes since the 2017 report:

Hiring open source talent is a priority for 83% of recruiters, up from 76% in 2017.

Linux is back among the most popular open source skill categories, making it knowledge required for most entry-level open source careers.
Containers are rapidly gaining in popularity and importance, with 57% of hiring managers seeking this expertise, up from only 27% last year.

There is a gap between the views of hiring managers and information technology professionals on the effectiveness of efforts to improve diversity in the industry.

Hiring managers move away from hiring external consultants and choose to train existing employees on new open source technologies and help them obtain certifications.

A still very tight recruitment market

While 55% of open source professionals surveyed say it is easy for them to find a job and 87% believe that mastering open source has boosted their careers, the situation is just as tricky for recruiters. 87% of recruiters report difficulties in recruiting.

To keep the most exciting profiles and attract talent, several strategies are put in place. Among these, training and particularly certification have become essential weapons, and it can be observed that companies implementing such plans have doubled since 2016, reaching almost half of respondents (42%). Developers say that training is their first difficulty (49%) in the open source sector before the lack of documentation (41%).

Salaries remain the primary motivation element for recruitment with 30%, but open source professionals also declare for 19% that their primary motivation lies in the originality of the projects and for 14% the possibility of balancing their professional and personal lives. Besides, 10% of them consider flexible working hours and teleworking as the main reasons for their recruitment decision.

The most sought-after skills in the open source market

Only upheaval in the 2018 ranking of skills sought: Linux. He had not gone far, but mastery of the operating system came back in force with 80% of recruiters looking for these skills. With 44% of recruiters looking for profiles that master containerization technologies, the growing trend observed over the last two years is confirmed and places these technologies among the most fashionable in technology companies. For the rest of the podium, we find the cloud, security, web technologies, networks.

A pioneer of the open source era, SUSE, the first company to provide open source services to companies, is acquired for 2.535 billion dollars by the Swedish private equity group EQT Partners. This acquisition comes shortly after SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 is available in beta.

Largest operation in SUSE history

With 1400 employees worldwide, SUSE achieved sales of nearly $35 million in the last twelve months of 2017. The amount of the sale is 26.7 times the adjusted operating income of the SUSE software unit for the 12 months ended October 2017.

Since its creation by German students, SUSE (Software- und System-Entwicklung) has been bought several times, notably by the American software company Novell in 2003 at 120 million dollars in 2003, with the aim of a competitive strategy with Microsoft’s operating systems. Without success, Novell itself was bought by Attachmate Group for 2.2 billion. In 2014 Attachmate merged with the British software company Micro Focus for 1.2 billion dollars. The acquisition by EQT Partners, therefore, represents the most significant transaction in the company’s history.

SUSE to focus on infrastructure

SUSE appears to be pleased with the new partnership with its new owner EQT Partners and is also committed to focusing on its expansion into the IT infrastructure field.

“This is exciting news for all of us at SUSE and marks the next step on our path of growth and momentum. The investment and support provided by EQT will enable us to continue to drive our strategy. »

What about open source?

In the announcement on the company’s blog, SUSE wants to reassure about its commitment to the open source world and the continuity of development projects:

“SUSE intends to continue its commitment to open source business and development model and actively participate in communities and projects aimed at bringing open source innovation to the high-quality enterprise. Reliable and usable solutions. Our genuinely open source model, where open refers to the freedom of choice offered to customers and not just the code used in our solutions, is integrated into the SUSE culture, differentiates us in the marketplace and has been the key to our years of success.

The company also confirms the continuation of the current management team: “The current management team led by SUSE CEO, Nils Brauckmann, will remain and continue to focus on the success of customers and partners with a deep commitment and commitment to communities and open source projects.