First Partner Summit of 2023 for SUSE South Africa

SUSE South Africa hosted its first Partner Summit of the year in Johannesburg. The event generated a lot of interest from both existing and new partners. Magda Hanekom, Partner Executive for SUSE Sub Sahara Africa, opened the event detailing the new GTM set-up, which has been segmented into two focus areas: Enterprise Container solutions, headed in the region by Dharam Juggath, and Business Critical Linux, by Caleb Sibeko.

Dharam explained how the Enterprise Container solutions, offered many differentiators that makes the technology a clear choice for enterprise. Aslam Raffe, Customer Success Manager, stepped in to cover the Business Critical Linux segment, highlighting why over 70% of SAP workloads currently run on SUSE.

Melissa Crute, from the Partner Success team, walked through the SUSE Partner Program, discussing the certifications for partners, as well as the benefits. Training and skills development were seen as priorities within the community, and Magda Hanekom further expanded on the skills shortage, proposing a graduate program that was welcomed by the partners.

Mike Roberts, Technology Consultant, discussed how services and consulting formed a vital part of many SUSE solutions, and how offerings like SUSE Quick Start could add additional value to an offering. These service offerings streamline the process and ensure customer satisfaction and trust.

The event also allowed us to discuss how we are seeing container management using Rancher Prime transform the way companies are gaining competitive advantage and realising cost savings. There are numerous success stories in the region including;

• Capitec, one of South Africa’s leading retail banks. During the pandemic it saw demand for its online services grew by 60%. Using Rancher Prime they managed to accelerate the transition to the cloud in super quick time to meet demand. Click
• Allan Gray one of Africa’s largest privately-owned and independent investment management companies Facilitating its new microservices centric architecture, Rancher Prime provided the ability to scale at speed. Click

During the networking session, various conversations around the graduate program and training, it also highlighted the relevance of certifications for MSPs. It not only enables them to gain the skillset, but also build demos and the environment for PoCs. This extra knowledge ensure they can meet and exceed customer SLAs and position themselves in a competitively to take a good share of the market potential.

From the feedback received, the SUSE Partner community certainly saw huge value in this event and would like to see more events like this on the calendar to collaborate.