USU Software

Founding and early years

The company was founded in 1977 by the banker and programmer Udo Strehl as Udo Strehl Unternehmensberatung (USU). In 1988 it began selling software products for IT management and in 1995 these were sold abroad for the first time.

In the following years, the company expanded its business to include knowledge management products and services.

IPO and takeovers

On 4 July 2000, USU was listed on the stock exchange. At that time, the company already had 170 employees and generated revenue of DM41 million in the 1998/99 financial year. Strehl planned to invest half of the proceeds from the IPO, amounting to DM35 million, in product development and the other half in acquisitions.

The share price of the Neu-Ulm-based company Openshop, which was also listed on the stock exchange on 21 March 2000, plummeted after its founder and CEO Thomas Egner (1962–2001) died in a plane crash in January 2001. Subsequently, in March 2002, Openshop merged with USU AG to form USU-Openshop AG. In 2003, the name was changed to USU Software AG.

Founder Udo Strehl moved to the supervisory board in 2002. In order to expand its product range, USU acquired Omega GmbH in 2005, LeuTek GmbH in 2006 and Aspera GmbH in 2010. With the acquisition of Aspera GmbH, the company claims to have become one of the world's leading providers of IT asset management system software.

In 2012, the USU Group acquired a majority stake in BIG Social Media GmbH, based in Berlin, and founded Aspera Technologies Inc. in Boston. In 2013, USU established a new research division focused on Industrial Big Data. In mid-2015, it acquired SecurIntegration GmbH, based in Cologne, which operated in SAP licence management; this company merged with Aspera GmbH a year later. Since early 2017, UnitB Technology GmbH, an agency for digital media and IT, has also been part of the USU Group. In May 2017, Easytrust SAS became the first French company to be acquired, and at the end of the same year, it was renamed USU SAS, focusing on software asset management and Oracle licence management.

Expansion and restructuring

In spring 2018, the subsidiary USU AG changed its legal form and has operated as USU GmbH since 28 March. Also in 2018, USU restructured its business areas and established the Unymira division, which focuses on the digitalisation of business processes in service and combined the offerings of the four previously independent USU divisions: BIG Social Media, Business Solutions, KCenter, and UnitB Technology. On 28 January 2021, the group announced that all subsidiaries would be united under the common USU umbrella brand.

To strengthen the distribution of its software applications in Asia, USU founded the company USU GK in Tokyo in autumn 2021. The following year, USU consolidated its IT management offerings into a new cloud portal.

Products and services

The product business of USU Software AG is bundled in the subsidiary USU GmbH.

In the IT service management business area, USU supports companies with ITIL-compliant products for strategic and operational IT and enterprise service management. USU's programs enable the digitalisation and automation of all processes necessary for the planning, design, operation, control, use, and billing of services. Analyst firms rank USU as a global market leader in this field.

In the area of IT asset management, the company provides software asset management applications and managed services. This allows customers to manage their IT resources to reduce costs, ensure software compliance, and minimise risks. Global large corporations use these SAM applications to improve their software usage.

The IT monitoring business area includes applications such as event monitoring, end-to-end monitoring, cloud and container monitoring, and IT event management, which monitor the entire IT infrastructure of companies to ensure its functionality.