Enterprises are racing to modernize infrastructure as 82% of container users now run Kubernetes in production. SUSE is positioning itself at the center of this shift, betting on open-source control and flexibility.
Peter Smails, general manager of cloud-native at SUSE, emphasized that customer demand centers on choice and vendor independence. “Open source is one of the core pillars,” he said. “Whatever you do from a vendor standpoint, focus on openness-it puts control into the hands of the customer.”
SUSE’s latest move includes Rancher Prime with an AI-powered assistant named Liz. Liz orchestrates context-aware agents across storage, security, observability, and fleet management. Administrators can issue natural-language commands to trigger complex workflows-like scanning vulnerabilities and applying patches-through a single interface.
“What makes it exceptionally cool is that customers can bring their own agents, and Liz integrates them through a singular interface,” Smails explained, calling the platform “ecosystem-driven, extensible, and context-aware.”
The company is also pushing SUSE Virtualization as a modern VMware alternative, adding multi-instance GPU support, auto-balancing, and live storage migration. Rather than a direct replacement, SUSE offers a unified platform to manage both virtual machines and containers side by side.
“Think open, think open, think open-whether that’s open source or open infrastructure,” Smails said. “It is a journey.”