SUSECON25 Veteran Linux wrangler SUSE confirmed its place aboard the AI train at its Orlando SUSECON25 shindig, where announcements were plentiful regarding the tech industry’s latest obsession.
There was also news for administrators charged with maintaining a diverse range of Linux distributions from the datacenter to the edge.
SUSE has been around for a long time – 33 years by our reckoning. Its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) line was first made available in 2000, starting life on an IBM S/390 mainframe. However, the biz has also been struggling for relevance. During the partner summit that opened the conference, one attendee put it bluntly to the bigwigs on stage: “A lot of people somehow think SUSE is dead.” How could this perception be countered?
It’s a good question, and SUSE rolled out various initiatives at the event in answer. As with much of the tech industry, SUSE is sprinkling AI throughout its product line, including agentic AI workflows, guardrails, observability tools, and an expanded AI Library for last year’s SUSE AI, all of which fit in well with the vibe the business is going for.
That said, the selection of Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing” and the “nothing changed at all” line from Bastille’s “Pompeii” were brave on-stage music choices for some of the keynote presentations.
SUSE has an avowed goal of providing the best environment in which customers can run their workloads, although it has no interest in following the path taken by the likes of Microsoft in creating LLMs.
However, SUSE was present when previous tech fads arose and was there when those same fads faded away. In addition to the AI glitz and glamor, there were also initiatives aimed squarely at administrators facing day-to-day challenges. Service pack 7 for SLES 15 is on the way, with support stretching to 2037. SLES 16 is due by the end of the year, and updates to SUSE Multi-Linux Support will be welcomed by enterprises managing diverse Linux environments.
SUSE has two Linux lines. One is the SUSE Linux family, which includes SLES and comes from the upstream openSUSE project. The other is Multi-Linux Support, which covers support for other Linux distributions, currently only CentOS and RHEL. SUSE confirmed that support was on the way for minor release versions as well as migration capabilities for major versions to minimize disruption.
Perhaps not as “cool” as AI, but still crucial for administrators managing diverse distributions.
Naturally, SUSE would prefer everything to be tinted green, like its lizard logo, but Multi-Linux Support is a recognition that the world doesn’t work that way.
To emphasize the point, SUSE also announced updates to its Multi-Linux Manager. Version 5.1 will include improved Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) with an eye to third-party tool integration. Rick Spencer, SUSE GM for Business Critical Linux, told The Register: “SUSE Multi-Linux Manager is implementing a complete RBAC feature from the ground up, designed to enable or disable any capability in the server.”
“The initial abilities of this RBAC control are enabling having a read-only user that will provide large teams with engineering and operations more visibility over data in Multi-Linux server to operations without risking making changes to the systems managed, usually done by engineering.”
There is also an expanded list of managed operating systems, including the new SUSE Linux versions, Amazon Linux 2023, and, intriguingly, a technology preview of Raspberry Pi OS.
Spencer told us that the addition of Raspberry Pi OS was “a result of a well-known customer inheriting a large deployment of edge devices already installed with this OS.” He did not reveal who the customer was, but added that it also had several smaller customers using the OS.
The customer, he noted, was evaluating SLES as a substitute for Raspberry Pi OS due to the “nice support” received from SUSE.
SUSE also announced an integration between SUSE Security and Microsoft Sentinel to funnel SUSE Security event data directly into Sentinel for analysis and threat mitigation recommendations.
Finally, there was a flurry of SUSE Rancher announcements, including Rancher for SAP applications – purpose-built for containerized SAP workloads – and SUSE Rancher Hosted, a fully managed pay-as-you-go service.
Combating the perception that SUSE is fading is tricky. By some metrics, the company is in rude health, enjoying financial growth, and, according to its CEO, taking market share from competitors – although he did not name names.
By devoting a substantial chunk of its conference to AI technology, SUSE is seeking to raise its profile. However, it was also quick to promote its more enterprise-friendly services, such as 12 more years of support for SLES 15 service pack 7 and updates to Multi-Linux Support.
It is a wide variety of services, ranging from new to traditional. Hopefully, one won’t overshadow the other. ®
