Exploring Digital Sovereignty with SUSE’s Imran Khan

Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Techstrong tv. You know, I've been trying to get this next guest on our show for since the summer, and it's already almost middle of, it's past the middle of September.

Between my travel and his travel and scheduling, it's just his people. Couldn't get my people to make these people get it together, but we finally did. I'm really, really happy and proud to introduce you all to Imron Khan.

Imron is the Chief Customer Officer at suse. Imron. Welcome.

Thank you, Alan, to text drunk tv. Yeah, thank you. And I'm, we finally got here.

Yes, we did. Better late than never my friend. Better late than never.

Hey, Imron, before we even start, I got a personal question there. It's not personal to you, but it's a personal question to me. I am always caught in between, and it's probably been my funny French Accenta.

I've heard it pronounced all different ways. How do you pronounce it? I pronounce it as Susa.

Susa. Okay. We're gonna go with SUSE today until I'm told differently.

Very Good. Fair enough. Radd, chief Customer Officer that cov that title, can cover a lot of sids.

Give us an idea of kinda what actually the you as chief customer Officer at SUSE does, and maybe a little bit of your personal journey journey getting here. Yeah, sure. Thank you.

Um, Alan. So, um, I, as you rightly said, I'm the chief customer for souse. Um, so what do I do?

I, I look after our customers, right? So I manage all of our post-sales organization, our support, our services, our customer success folks, um, and anything to do with the customer experience. That's pretty much what I look after at suse.

Um, my journey, I've been with SUSE for about three and a half years. Um, I came from another software vendor called BMC Software, um, sure. Where I was there, chief Customer Officer, uh, for a number of years.

I think it just over five years prior to that, I was a, a supply chain software company called JDA software, which is now Blue Yonder. And prior to that I was a hp. Um, so yeah, I've been in, I've been in this world now for, for a little while now.

Always in the customer facing kind of activities. Very cool. Yeah, no, very familiar with BMC, actually, the CEO and I'm, I'm old and I'm drawing a blank.

I apologize. But he came from ca. Oh, I'm in Saeed.

Uh, I'm in, right. I'm on Saeed, so I know, I know I'm on. Well, I know him from his ca days actually even.

Right? What a, a great gentleman. I, I enjoyed interviewing him.

I always enjoy any time we get a chance to spend any time with him, but they built a great company there as well. Um, but Imran, we're here to talk about Susa today and, and you're obviously eminently qualified for this chief customer officer role. As we were talking off camera, I was mentioning, you know, depending who you talk to, you ask them who Susa.

Some people tell you, oh, they're an open source company. Other people tell you, oh, they're the Linux company. Other people say, oh no, they're cloud native.

They're the cloud native company. Of course, in recent times we've added AI and there's a security element and there's more it, if I had it, say, Imran, I'm going to give you 60 seconds. Tell me who SUSE is.

Yeah, no, that's a great question. Um, uh, so suse, we, uh, open source, uh, primarily, um, uh, Linux, absolutely right Edge ai, um, as well as cloud native. Um, so we do all of the above, right?

So you're absolutely right. And I had the same, I had the same experience when I joined suse. I had to go and Google them and go to their website to, um, kind of figure out exactly what portfolio they covered.

'cause there was so many. com to actually look at our extended portfolio. Absolutely.

But there, there, there are building blocks, right? Open source is, is fundamental to the DNA there, it's kinda Absolutely. Your Heritage.

Yeah. Uh, As is Linux, right? One of the probably early foundational Linux distro providers, right?

Uh, through acquisition and, and, and really support of CNCF Kubernetes containers, really a cloud native, native company, if that's a word or phrase, right? Um, early into ai Yeah. Big adopters and, and, and prevalent of ai.

Um, it, it's interesting, you know, when you layer these up and then I I, I'm gonna throw one other thing at it, and, and it really goes segueing into our topic of discussion. So SUSE is a European based, it's a global powerhouse, but proud of its European heritage. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And, and I, and I think that is also part of that DNA that makes suse suse. Yeah, you got it.

Absolutely. And that's, and you know, back to, we are very proud of our, uh, European heritage, and, and you're absolutely right. We op offer, um, operate globally in multiple countries, uh, multiple regions across the world.

So it doesn't actually hold us back. It actually makes us more stronger, especially with the subject that we're gonna cover today, Especially in this day and age. It's not a bad thing.

Um, Imron, let, let's talk about that subject. Suse recently, uh, you know, a month or two ago, uh, announced a, a big push into, uh, digital sovereignty and, and, you know, sovereign IT as it's being called now, sovereign it, uh, operations, sovereign IT solutions. Talk to us a bit about that.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Uh, and one of the things we announced a, a new offering, um, way back in July when we were first meant to talk, um, when it was fresh off the press. And some of that was driven by customer demand as well.

And, and as you mentioned, digital sovereignty is, there's kind of like three pillars to it, right? Which is around data, technology and operations. Um, we'd already started the journey on some of our data and operations based upon customer demand.

Um, but it was something that was kind of like more of a prototype because they wanted to know, look, how are we gonna ring fence their data and how we are gonna ring fence the operations in how we actually support them as a customer. Um, but then with all the kind of global stuff that was going on, um, you know, it was something that we needed to formalize as well, right? And this is why we actually came up with our, our effectively our sovereign offering of premium support to make sure that we understand exactly what our customers wanted and how we could actually make sure that we kept them, you know, sovereign, as I would say.

Absolutely. You know, and, and look, there's a lot of macro factors that are driving the, the sovereignty issue, I think one is, is obviously political turmoil. I don't wanna say turmoil, political, uh, well, let's say turmoil, I can't think of a better word, but, you know, political uncertainty, let's say that political uncertainty we're here in the US obviously, I'm here in the US recording this, and it seems every day there's a new headline about a different direction or what's on again, off again?

Tariffs. No tariffs, who's our friends, who's, it's, it's certainly interesting times in terms of world, uh, you know, relations. We have the EU arising as you know, it's a multipolar world that we live in.

Yeah. And the EU is certainly one of those poles, right? One of the powerhouses.

And, and in many ways, especially when it comes to technology, seems to have more of a political will to get things done rather than a sort of laissez-faire, just, you know, let it happen. Um, you have the age of ai, AI's, you know, it's changing everything as, as you well know, as SUSE's on top of, it's creating all new bedfellows, if you will. Um, increased competition, supply chains, shortening supply chains, you know, people having coming outta post COVID out in the pandemic understanding about supply chains and, and wanting to shorten our supply chains.

All of these things are driving the sovereignty issue. Let's peel back the layers on Seuss's offering here. What, what, what exactly is it?

Why does it work? Yeah, so this was born out of a, a customer request. Um, whereas they wanted to make sure that we ringfenced their data, um, and we actually supported them through EU employees.

Um, and obviously having a global organization, um, sometimes we have a follow the sun model. We have, um, you know, with regards to support to make sure they get 24 by seven support. We kind of leverage the infrastructure that we've got around the world to actually make it more effective for the customer.

It gave us a challenge. Um, so what we had to do was ring fence their data in Europe, set up a localized EU support center that could do that coverage, um, to make sure that we were actually meeting their needs and give, and make sure that they could actually tick off their compliance as well. The good news is, is that we had a level of experience of doing this.

Uh, one of the arms of our, uh, company is called, uh, uh, Rancho Rancho Government Solutions. Um, so we were used to actually doing that. And Rancho Government Solutions is, obviously, it's in the us it's supports the federal government and a lot of activities out there.

So we had some experience of doing that where we'd ring-fenced a lot of that infrastructure as well. So, um, it was a, it was a company called OVH, uh, cloud, um, that actually came with the request to us, and we actually built that for them. Um, but then when, as you rightly said, with the uncertainty of the world, um, and some of the political drivers, it was an offering that was required, right?

So we were able to actually take that and actually kind of make it more of a prescriptive offering. So that way now they get localized support, localized contact, localized engineers, everything is actually, as I said, ringfence from that perspective, and it's dedicated support as well. Um, and you know, we've got a number of different contracts out there now.

We launched it hard launch in July. As I said, most of it was actually requested, uh, prior to that by some of our, our European customers. And now we're actually gone to market with it as part of, uh, one of our offerings, which is the three pillars that we spoke about earlier around sovereignty.

It covers data and it covers our operations. And we're doing a lot of work within our product organization as well to make sure that we go down the same route on the technology side as well. I love it.

You know, one, one of the challenges around this digital sovereignty, uh, space is, there's different aspects to it. One is where is that data that you're, what was the term you used? Ringed Ring-fenced, Ring-fenced.

Where is the data that's being ring-fenced? Where is it actually stored? Is it, you know, is it in one of the hyperscaler cloud providers?

Is it in a private data center? I, I'm not aware. Is SUSE running private data centers now, or are, would you have partners who run the, the where the, the, the, the physical plant, if you will?

It's all on our data centers. So you Own, so SUSE owns their own, operates their own data centers. Yeah, it's, it's our own.

Yeah, that's great. It's our own. So we worked with our own IT organization to make sure that we could actually have that, to give that level of comfort as well.

That's fantastic. You know, we were talking off camera, I, I wrote an article a couple weeks ago about the long arm of Uncle Sam, right? If, if you're, you could have a whole digital sovereignty ring fence situation, but if you're hosting it in a data center owned by a US company, a US based company, and the US government makes a demand on that for that data or access or what have you, the US company may very well open the, the kimono or, you know, give the, the government, the US government access to that data.

And, and that sort of defeats the whole purpose of digital sovereignty, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. To me, that's just like a, no, it's just a glossary on front of what they're actually proposing.

Um, and that's the difference between, um, US at Susa, right? We've actually got it end to end. Um, and that's what makes it more powerful.

And it's right why I said right at the start, um, our European heritage allows us to do that more. So, Absolutely. You know, Imron, there's, there's an aspect of this whole sovereignty thing that makes me sad.

Uh, you know, I, one of the greatest joys I've always had on the internet, and I've been on the internet since it went commercial, right? And probably before that a little too. And, um, I always get a kick out of, even today we do webinars and stuff, and I get people who log on from, from India and Singapore and Australia and New Zealand and Pap New Guinea, as well as all over Europe and Nigeria and South America.

I, even if, and I luckily I, I've had a chance to travel and see the world. Yeah. But it still gives me joy to see the whole world joining up right On at a webinar or some event with sovereignty.

I feel like we are balkanizing if, if you will, the internet a bit. Is that the future? Are are we gonna go back to a global thing, or, or is, is digital sovereignty the, the way of the world now?

Yeah. And that's such a, and you know, uh, you know, not that that it's use this as a therapy session, but I I, I, I have the same like-minded thoughts as you, right? So now I've worked for global companies for the last nearly 30 years of my career, you know, having, you know, offshore locations, onshore locations across the world in countries that some people can't pronounce.

Um, and I loved it and I enjoyed it, and I still do today. I think with regards to the future on sovereignty, you know, it's like what you said with regards to this uncertainty, you know, who knows how it's gonna play out, right? I hope it doesn't go too hard in that direction because I think we've done a good job in the world that we live in today, actually kind of unpicking those borders, if that makes sense.

Um, so that's my own personal kind of view on the subject. I think we're of a like mind on that. Um, so obviously the digital sovereignty offering is available in the eu.

Yes. What about other parts of the world where, you know, where is this also available? Yeah, so we started with the eu 'cause that was the biggest kind of request for demand that we had.

Um, but we are looking to actually go and push it out into different locations as well. So we're looking at other territories, and most of it is gonna be demand generated, right? So once things start to pop up elsewhere, there might be situations like we've already doing it in the US with regards to our government services arm, right?

As I spoke about. Um, but there might be other areas as well that we actually look to tap into whether it could be contagious, right? So that before you know, it, Latin America might start wanting sovereignty rules and regulations based upon some of the things that are going on in, in the world today as well.

So I think there's an opportunity for us to actually roll it out dependent upon where, where the demand sits or unpick it, depending upon what we just spoke about, right? Yeah. That, that's true.

Absolutely. You know, I'm just sitting here thinking too, is we, we spoke about who is Susa before we said Linux and open source cloud native ai. We didn't mention that you're operating your own data centers, that you're an infrastructure provider as well.

So, you know, I, I think that's one of the, the best kept secrets, if you will, in technology, is really the, the full scope of SUSE's offerings, right? And we, we only have 15 minutes here, but we could probably spend a day jumping in, you know? Yeah.

I you mentioned rancher gov. You know, there's more I To, I totally agree with you, Alan. com to look at all the extended portfolio of what we do.

'cause I thought it was just the Linux company at that particular time. And I remember speaking with some colleagues of mine, ORX folks that I'd worked with in the Bay Area who said, oh no, you know, they've got, they've got containers as well. They're, they're really big into Kubernetes.

They just acquired this, this company called Rancher not so long ago. So the more I double clicked on it as well, the more I realized we were a really good kept secret, um, and we're a little powerhouse all by ourselves and, and, you know, ultimately open this video, we'll do some of that. The more we can keep on pushing our message out to actually realize what extended portfolio that we have to offer, uh, the, the better it is for us as well as Susa.

And, and I thank you for your, for your pushes for us as well. Um, even at our customer event earlier this year. I appreciate it.

That was, I, I was telling you off, it was one of the best events I've attended in the last year. I really enjoyed my time there. Um, IM run for people who are watching in this and saying, this is just what I'm looking for.

How can they, how can they get more information and maybe, uh, you know, move along the path here with this, uh, digital sovereignty offering. Absolutely. com, it's all on there.

You'll see it. We've done a number of different publications around it. This is obviously one of them as well.

Um, and we keep on pushing the message out. We are there, we are ready, ready to rock and roll. We've sold a number of contracts already, um, and we see the demand increasing.

com, you'll see everything you need to do, um, to actually buy the offering as well, as well as look at our extended portfolio. Thank you, Imran. Thank you for coming on Techstrong tv.

You know, I think I'm gonna add another thing to the suse kind of DNA and that is opportunistic. When SUSE sees the needs in the market, they fill it, right? And there's a great example of it.

And, and the, the whole way it came about from a customer asking for, it says a lot about the product process there, right? When customers ask for things, you provide 'em. Absolutely.

And thank you. And I'd love to come back on the show again, Alan. Anytime.

Let's not wait three months to make it happen, but we will. And we're going to, we should give a quick shout out. Uh, Shan's gonna be in Prague in April, which will be here before we know it.

Hopefully we'll talk to you before then though. And, uh, we'll, we'll try to do something from there as well. Absolutely.

Thank you, Alan. Really appreciate It. Thank you.

Imran Khan, chief Customer Officer at suse here on Text Junk tv. We're gonna take a break, go check out their digital sovereignty offering, as well as their rancher containers, Linux, and even data centers. But we're here on Tech Trunk tv.

We'll be right back.