Freedom of Choice Fuels Unlimited Possibilities for SUSE Customers and Partners

At SUSE, our core values—Choice, Innovation, Trust, and Community—define who we are and guide everything we do. These values drive us to provide world-class solutions, foster collaboration, and empower our customers and partners to succeed in their unique journeys.

They are all important, but the first is especially so right now. In today’s dynamic and complex technology landscape, the ability to make informed choices—whether it’s about technology stacks, deployment strategies, or partnerships—is crucial for success. At SUSE, we believe choice unlocks innovation, creates value, and drives meaningful outcomes for all stakeholders.

Unlocking Choice

Our customers tell us choice is reducing, as more and more vendors apply various lock-in strategies. Customers are frustrated by vendors who preach a one-size-fits-all approach. Customers want flexibility in how they purchase, deploy, and manage technology. The ability to choose between various types of partners, and solutions that work seamlessly across diverse environments, from on-premises to hybrid and multi-cloud is crucial to ensuring the flexibility needed to meet our partner and customer needs.

It’s not just about choosing the best technology from vendors without being tied to one company, it’s about having the freedom to choose how, where, and what technology is delivered.

Serving up Choice

On a personal note, I’m an avid tennis player and when it comes to kit, I have my favorites. I don’t go all in with “one vendor” –  I have my own custom “stack”:  Adidas shoes; Volkl racquet; Nike hat; balls are a commodity offering – depending on whether I’m playing on a clay versus hardcourt – I’m vendor agnostic. I want quality that sets me up for my best game. 

In much the same way, our partners want to build their own customer “stacks” that work for their specific environments. Many of our customers have hybrid environments, and they want and need support for multiple linux distributions. We do not dictate that our customers choose one Linux over the other; rather support whatever choices they have made. In fact, we enable choice by offering support for other Linux distributions and the ability to streamline management for up to 16 different Linux distributions within their environment. 

Same follows with our Cloud offerings – our customers and partners will have a multi or hybrid cloud strategy and often have two cloud vendors of choice for diversification. We work with AWS, Microsoft, and Google, as well as many Managed Service Providers across the globe. 

With the hardware vendors that we partner with, we have natural coopetition (cooperation & competition). But, SUSE offers choice by supporting SUSE Linux on both IBM Z / LinuxONE and Power architectures, depending on workload requirements. We offer feature parity with our High Availability and Live Patching technologies being available for use with IBM platforms as well. The reason we certify and support SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on our partner’s hardware is to offer choice for our mutual customers. 

Another example: we strive to support a solution stack that is configurable, to allow each of our partners the flexibility to build a tailored solution for their customers. These solutions provide the balance of customization and scale in a supported environment, and customers can rest assured that the technologies are certified to work together. An example of these would be Veeam Kasten’s backup and recoverable capabilities combined with SUSE Virtualization. Just another way our partnerships are driven by customer choice. 

Game – Set – Match: Technologies that Enable Choice

We build technologies that open doors for our customers and partners, so they’re never locked into a single solution:

We make Linux, and we manage many. We understand that Linux is not just an operating system but a foundation for innovation. SUSE provides a flavor of Linux, but we know that for many enterprise customers, having multiple Linux distributions in their environment is the norm. We have proven our ability to support and manage multiple Linux distributions for our customers to help them cut complexity and cost.

We make Kubernetes, and we manage many. In today’s cloud native world, Kubernetes has emerged as the powerful essential for orchestrating and scaling applications. SUSE’s Kubernetes solutions allow our partners and customers to deploy, run and manage their applications wherever they like – whether in the cloud, multi-cloud, or hybrid environments. This means our customers can manage and operate their containerized applications with peak agility.

We make zero-trust security the default. Security is critical to any organization, and we believe it should be accessible by default. With a zero-trust security model, SUSE ensures that our customers have the flexibility to build secure infrastructures without the need for complex, fragmented solutions. This security-first approach gives customers peace of mind while retaining the flexibility to adapt to evolving threats.

Our customers and partners don’t want to be bound by proprietary systems or limited options. We’ve designed our products and solutions to support open standards and interoperability, supporting choice.

Unlimited Possibilities: The SUSE Way

By enabling choice, we allow our customers and partners to explore new market opportunities, leverage SUSE technologies to differentiate their offerings, and drive growth without constraints – creating unlimited possibilities for the future of their business. 

Choice is not just one of SUSE’s values—it’s a commitment to empowering customers and partners with the freedom to innovate, adapt, and succeed. Paired with our principles of Meritocracy and Integrity, it completes the foundation of how we engage and collaborate across our ecosystem.