Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced today that it's selling some OpenStack and Cloud Foundry assets to SUSE. The companies also note that SUSE is acquiring some "talent" — meaning, people.

SUSE's parent company, Micro Focus, is in the process of merging with HPE's Software division, an $8.8 billion deal that was announced in September.

SUSE already offers an OpenStack-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud. HPE's OpenStack assets will be poured into that offering. On the Cloud Foundry side, SUSE says it's going to use the acquired assets to launch its own enterprise-ready platform-as-a-service (PaaS).

HPE doesn't appear to be giving up on cloud completely. Today's announcement says that the company will continue to offer Helion OpenStack and the Stackato PaaS, both of which will continue to use the relevant technologies that are being handed off to SUSE.

In other words, HPE is selling some technology that it will then continue to use. In that sense, this deal resembles the "spin-mergers" HPE has arranged, such as the transaction with Micro Focus. HPE is spinning off the Software group, which will merge with Micro Focus and create a new company, which HPE shareholders will hold a 50.1 percent stake in.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The companies expect to close the deal in the first quarter of 2017.