Assumes responsibility for all Novell Linux desktop initiatives

Nuremberg, Germany — 02/02/2004 — Novell's SUSE Linux business unit today announced the appointment of Markus Rex as general manager.

Rex, previously SUSE's vice president, Research and Development, will assume his new duties immediately. As general manager of the SUSE Linux business unit, reporting to Chris Stone, Novell vice chairman - Office of the CEO, Rex will lead the development of SUSE Linux, from the desktop to server, and will work with other Novell business units to deliver a complete Linux solution stack. Rex will also assume responsibility for Novell's Linux desktop activities.

"In the past eleven years, SUSE Linux has played a substantial role in the development of Linux, bringing Linux to the IBM eServer family, driving the Linux port of AMD64, and achieving the first ever security certificates for open source - just to name a few - and has accumulated a globally unique engineering know-how in the Linux sector," said Chris Stone, Novell vice chairman - Office of the CEO. "Melding Novell's enterprise-class networking solutions, technical support, training and consulting services with the open source expertise of SUSE Linux, we provide customers a solid basis for the deployment of Linux in mission-critical scenarios."

"As a full part of Novell, we can leverage our joint know-how to deliver a best-of-breed, full Linux solution stack, maximizing development and marketing synergies," said Markus Rex, general manager of Novell's SUSE Linux business unit. "Maintaining our technological roots and combining them with Novell's expertise and resources, we give our customers and partners a unique set of software and services to realize the benefits of Linux."

Rex joined SUSE in February 1999 as an engineer and became SUSE's head of development four months later. As vice president of Research and Development, he facilitated SUSE's growth from 15 engineers in 1999 to more than 165 today - one of the largest open source development teams in the world. Prior to joining SUSE, Rex worked in the department of Computer Science at the University of Erlangen and as an IT consultant at Philips.

Markus Rex, General Manager SUSE Linux
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