SUSE wins HPE’s “brother-in-law” of the year award

Earlier today, SUSE announced that they have won the “HPE Global Technology Partner of the Year” award.

This is one of those “Companies give each other awards so they can have some pretend news about how great they are” things. Companies that work together do these sorts of things all the time… and they really are pretty meaningless. (I should know. I’ve written more than my fair share of articles, blog posts, and press releases about exactly these sorts of pointless “awards”.)

So why am I mentioning this “news” at all? Why not just ignore it completely?

Because there’s something just a bit amusing about this one. It made me giggle.

“HPE Global Technology Partner of the Year” award … to SUSE.

In 2016 SUSE’s parent company (Micro Focus) merged with a portion of HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise).

As a result, SUSE and a big portion of HPE became the same company. They merged. I remembered this… because I was there when it happened.

Flash forward to now, and the rest of HPE just gave SUSE an award for being a good “partner”.

Then the CEO of SUSE took to Twitter to do a little bragging about the honor.

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This is sort of like if your brother-in-law gives you a “best brother-in-law” coffee cup.

Then you hop on Twitter, posting the picture of your new coffee cup, and proclaiming how amazing your award is. How honored you are to receive such a prestigious coffee cup.

But not in a tongue in cheek, goofy, or ironic way. In a totally serious way.

Well… congratulations to SUSE! You are your brother-in-law’s brother-in-law of the year!

I suppose I really shouldn’t pick on SUSE for this one. Or HPE. It’s not like they’re the only companies out there who engage in this totally un-self-aware ridiculousness. But it made me chuckle when I saw it.

Discuss this article over on the corresponding posts on Lunduke.Locals.com.