Shaping Your Resilient Future — Inside SUSECON 2026

Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Techstrong TV. I'm very excited.

This weekend I'll be getting on the plane and heading to beautiful Prague, Czech Republic for what promises to be, I think, maybe I'm wrong, probably the biggest SUSE CON ever. It will be. Yeah.

And there's so much going on. We've been touching on it. I did a webinar last week with Margaret Dawson, CMO of SUSE CON, of SUSE, excuse me.

And we're going to be doing a lot more coverage there. We'll have a newsletter coming out for it, so stay tuned. But I thought it would be good before the craziness, or maybe the craziness already has set in, but before the craziness sets in, to grab Margaret for a couple of minutes here and give you all a little sneak peek into this year's conference and why it's so popular, why it's so important.

Margaret, welcome to Techstrong TV. It's great to have you back on. Thank you.

Always a pleasure. Always a pleasure to be here. Absolutely.

Well, it's my pleasure, actually. But for those who don't know, as I mentioned, Margaret is the CMO of SUSE. She has a long history.

Not too long. Not too long. Pretty long.

I realized when I said that. But Margaret has held a variety of very senior level positions that make her imminently qualified to be sitting in this chair and going over what we're going to talk about. So Margaret, don't mean to embarrass you or say anything out of school there, but the theme for this year's CON is Shape Your Resilient Future.

Yep. And I got to tell you, in a world where it's AI this and AI that- Mm-hmm ... and what's AI going to do for you and me, it's refreshing to see a title that at least doesn't have AI in the title, though AI, I'm sure is going to have its place at the table.

But when we say shape your resilient future, Margaret, what do you actually mean by that? What are we talking about? Yeah, it's a great question.

It was interesting when we were coming up with ideas for themes, of course, there's a million things that we could talk about, but whether customers were dealing with, I need to reduce cost, I've got to modernize, I've got to get off VMware, I need to implement AI, I need to migrate more apps to the cloud or repatriate things from the cloud, whatever it is that is the priority, there was this theme that kept coming back, and it was around resiliency. And while people have different ways of describing what resilient means to them, it always goes back to, I need to get more control, right? So for some, resiliency equals sovereignty.

For some, it equals just data protection. For some, it means just a foundational ability to feel like it is, I am reliable, secure, stable, like I can keep things in control as chaos is going around me. Right?

We're seeing with everything going around, not only with AI, but cybersecurity, geopolitical pressures, you name it. People are just under so much pressure, and so what they need is that sense of security around resiliency. So it was very intentional.

And the shaping your resilient future also is about doing this together. So it goes back to our open source roots and community and the fact that anything that you do can be done better when you have your community around you, and that we can all see and participate in the open source way. Love it.

Of course, when you came up with this and talked about it, I don't think you or the SUSE folks are prescient, but who would have thought that the week before the show, this whole mythos and Project Glasswing and everything that's blowing up. You want to talk about resiliency. If we're ever going to need resiliency, it's going to be now.

And if we're ever going to need community, because no one company, no one country, is going to be big enough, I think, to really take this on, take the bull by the horns here and secure. Everything's up for grabs. No, 100%.

And you're even seeing increased calls also for that open standard, right? Because we know that if we have transparency, it improves the ability for us to be secure. It gives us whatever, hundreds and thousands of people working together in the community to improve the security.

So I think, when AI and security are becoming so core, open standards, whether it's around MCP or around agentics or around anything, like how we provide those open standards so everyone is kind of working on the same page is so important. So there'll be a lot of discussions, I think, around that. I agree with you.

I have new... I think you ain't seen nothing yet when it comes to open standards, because truly, the only way we're going to get through the gauntlet here of this vulnerability apocalypse is open, right? Mm-hmm.

Companies working together. That's this whole Project Glasswing. There's 40 to start- Right ...

but there'll be a lot more companies adding in, working together as a community to harden and to be resilient. Resiliency is the name of the game. So kudos whoever on the team picked it there.

Your timing is impeccable. It was a group effort, I will tell you. It was definitely a group effort.

It kind of came together. But what was interesting is when we first came out with the theme, you weren't really seeing this term resilience, and I-I swear, I don't know, like you said, I would love to say we were omniscient, but you see this word resilient, resiliency coming up more and more and more and more. So it definitely, the drumbeat was there.

And the only thing I'll add when we talk about community is one thing I'm really excited about with SUSECON is we have more kind of sponsors and partner ecosystem. If I just look at the keynote stage, it's amazing. We've got AMD, AWS, Fujitsu, Dell, and I'm sure I'm forgetting somebody here that I'm going to get in trouble with.

But there is amazing partners across, whether it's hardware, software, AI, you name it. We're going to be talking to a broad ecosystem that is helping customers put these solutions together to become more resilient. I love it.

Just kudos to you and the team, though. You really nailed this one. As we get under resiliency and- Mm-hmm ...

resilience, though, there are themes kind of underneath that main current. There are. Flexibility, control, choice.

Yep. And this goes to the heart of SUSE's history, right? Of their legacy, of their DNA.

Open infrastructure, we spoke a little bit about open, but SUSE was an open source company before open source was cool, right? Yeah. And so that whole thing of giving customers choices.

You don't have to use the whole SUSE stack. I remember when SUSE announced you could mix in other packages and you... This is going back a while.

And then I think it was at last year's show, right? Didn't you put together your own secure packages of the most popular- That's right ... Linux packages?

Yeah, I think choice is absolutely the underlying, if I had a sub theme, right, it would still be the power of choice and open is core to that. But what you're talking about is we have a very composable architecture across our stack. So it's not opinionated, you could say, or it's not tied together so tightly that you can't do one piece without the other.

So what that allows you is choice within our ecosystem, but also if you have a different operating system today and you want to run SUSE Rancher Prime on top of it, you can do that. That's very different than the competition. If you want to use all SUSE, obviously it works better than any other combination, but it's not required.

And I think this goes back to one of the core things that we provide that you and I have talked about before is we are the only company that allows you to work with SUSE to manage not just our Linux, but any Linux as well as support. So we provide extended support for many flavors of Linux after the vendor itself has stopped providing that support because a lot of companies need more transition time. The same is true for Kubernetes.

We obviously have our own Kubernetes, but we manage anything with our multi-cluster management capabilities. So the reality of most, if not all enterprises as well as governments, is they have a heterogeneous, complex environment that has a ton of existing infrastructure applications and the need to modernize and implement now AI and cloud native and all the latest next gen technologies, take it all the way to the edge and beyond. And so that ability to simplify management, simplify security across that heterogeneous stack is hugely valuable.

Absolutely. And here's the breath of fresh air, though. In an age where companies are trying to build walled gardens, trying to lock in, everybody's afraid of losing someone moving their cheese.

Everyone's afraid of losing their- Right ... edge with this AI stuff, right? And so they play the platform game.

It's an old game. You've been in IT, I've been in IT- Yeah ... and tech long enough.

That's it. We- Who has the platform wins- Right ... used to be what we said.

Exactly. Yeah. And they're still playing that game.

Mm-hmm. But you know the old saying, the harder you grab sand in your hand, the more leaks out between your fingers. Sometimes you got to set it free, and if it's yours, it comes back to you.

The little Jonathan Livingston Seagull- Oh my gosh ... for those who remember. That's so '70s.

Yeah. Well, yeah, that's me. But anyway, but that's kind of the SUSE model here, which is, hey, take what you want, take what makes sense for you to use.

Right. If you need the whole thing, the whole thing is there, and it works really well together. Right.

But the individual pieces play well with other pieces as well. Yeah, and I think I'm just going to take it back to open standards a little bit. I just read this stat that said as we look forward to LLM models, it's expected that some 70, 80% of models in the future will be private models- Yeah ...

not public models. And they'll be customized as well, like the insurance platform will be based on its own private model. But how do you integrate across these different things?

Or how do you talk to a private model and a public model? And that's where open standards comes in, whether it's with MCP Server or we continue to look at open APIs, right? So there's always this place, even as you need to customize or create a private version of something, that we want to still have these open standards for that extensibility, for that interoperability, for the integration, because otherwise that walled garden becomes an inability then to innovate and scale.

Absolutely, and it's the balkanization of every... You lose the advantage of this whole great thing we're building in. However, the flip side is people want that flexibility.

They want that choice. One of the big drivers of this is digital sovereignty. And again- Yeah ...

And is really one of the leaders in digital sovereignty solutions. And not only solutions. Andreas is a friend.

I follow him pretty religiously on LinkedIn and everything. True thought leadership. So not just trying to sell something.

I'm talking about true thought leadership and what does it really mean? That's right. AI sovereignty, digital sovereignty, cloud sovereignty, right?

Software sovereignty. What is that? All these different sovereignties, what does it really mean?

And, again, SUSE, it's a topic that's so hot and is, I think we mentioned on the webinar, it's not just a European thing, 31 or 32%- Right ... of American, of US-based companies indicated it was a big deal to them. That's right.

No, this is a global phenomenon, and I think it goes back to all those things. So to be sovereign, which means I need control of where my data resides or where my capabilities reside for whatever reason, right? We can say geopolitical is a pressure.

We can say cybersecurity is the pressure. And as you mentioned, for some people, sovereign just literally means protection, security, and for others it has more geopolitical implications. But regardless, we still go back to, how do you stay true to that open standard mentality, right?

So you can be sovereign by choice, as we like to say, but open by design. So going back to that open architecture, going back to that modularity and composability, but with the end goal of sovereignty. And so I think what you'll see throughout SUSECON is that juxtaposition of AI innovation and open, digital sovereignty and open, right?

Heterogeneity and openness. So all of that leads you and allows you to be more resilient, and it all goes back to that choice of doing it your way. And not to borrow from the American Burger King commercials, but I really do think that is kind of a good analogy, because if you're feeling out of control, how do you get back control?

You have that choice to do it the way you need to do it for your organization in your specific situation in whatever corner of the world you're in and whatever competitive pressures you're facing. Agreed. So to me, that's really, as counterintuitive as it may be- Right ...

digital sovereignty is about choice. That's right. I need the choice to pick the right solution for me, whether I'm talking about AI or cloud or platform or flavor of Linux even.

I need the choice to pick what's right for me. That's right. Look, I think individual sovereignty is part of this digital sovereignty as well.

It's interesting. I'm actually doing a session at SUSECON around this very issue of standardization versus risk management, and it's all going back to, as you try to scale, there is benefit in trying to standardize on some of our architectural layers. Do I make some big bets around a certain flavor of Kubernetes, a certain operating system, a certain observability platform, et cetera.

We could go on and on, automation, et cetera. And sometimes you need to do that. You need to do that from a security standpoint, a policy standpoint, a cost standpoint.

But then there's that if I take too big of a bet or I over-standardize, is that just hurting my ability to do business continuity, to manage my risk, to not get so tied in with one vendor or one technology that I've lost that choice? I've lost that flexibility. And the thing that I always talk about with customers is, rather than starting with that layer, start with what you're trying to do.

Is the goal of that workload or that data set or that experience sovereignty? Is it more about a customer-facing app that's directly tied to revenue, and it needs to be really adaptable and always on? Start with the criteria and the needs of that workload, of that application, of that experience, and then figure out what's right in terms of underneath the iceberg, so to speak, at the infrastructure layer or the data center layer or the cloud layer, right?

Whereas sometimes we like to start with the answer instead of asking the questions. Agreed 100%. I want to move to a fourth area that I think is going to be really deeply explored at SUSECON, and that's this, let's call it the new stuff, right?

Yeah. Well, some of it isn't that new, but cloud native, right? Yep.

Look, if you're having a greenfield app, cloud native probably is your system of choice. It's 70-plus percent of greenfield are cloud native. But it's also becoming the dominant stack for AI applications as well.

That's right. Right? They're running on kube and so forth.

AI workloads are containerized workloads most of the time. Exactly. I'm sure there's exceptions, but the vast majority.

A majority, critical mass, 75%-plus. The edge has become real, right? We've been talking about the edge for a couple years, and again, SUSE positioned themselves well to be an edge player, right?

Well, we started that early, both with a couple things. One is a lot of people have followed K3s, which is a- Yes. Lightly ...

Kubernetes flavor that is made for more resource-constrained environments, and the edge is a perfect example of that. We also have the ability with SLES, with our SUSE Linux, and that composability to just use the pieces that are needed in whether it's near, far, or tiny edge. And then, as you know, recently we acquired a company called Losant, and that has taken us all the way to the industrial IoT, so think sensors in manufacturing or the tiny edge.

Tiny. No matter what the edge means to you and what you need, people don't always realize the need for software on literally the tiniest sensor bits and whatever. And so that architecture and how that all fits together from that furthest edge all the way to the data center, and how do you think about that in a consistent, resilient, secure, stable, and yet flexible way, so you're literally using the hardware, the software, the chips, and the security that you need for that specific application or that specific environment.

So there'll be a lot of talk about that, a lot of hybrid environments, this flexibility across all these different places. That's the reality. And to innovate, you need to have that agility.

So we've made it all this way. We haven't really talked a lot about AI. But I'm sure there's going to be plenty.

So there's going to be some really, really, really exciting announcements around AI. I was going to say, I'm sure there's going to be something. I so want to say it.

I so want to say it. All right. But I won't.

I promise. Look, it's just you and I. Who's listening?

No. Oh, yeah. Who's listening?

Next time. It's just going to be on the World Wide Web. Yes.

There will be AI, right? What did you say yesterday or whenever we were talking? You said the Internet, and I almost started giggling because I'm like, oh my gosh.

Yeah. We don't even say that anymore. Yeah.

No, we don't. I know. There is going to be some big, big announcements around AI, major partners.

I am super excited about this. We are all in, and we'll be doing some things that SUSE has never done before with partners around AI. And it's all about helping our customers move to the future and do it in a way that works for them.

So, you definitely want to stay tuned on Tuesday the 21st is when all the big announcements will be going out. So I'm sure your newsletter will be full of that. Chocked.

And I think there's two things. I will say quickly that when we say AI at SUSE, we kind of have two sides to that coin. One is just the AI capabilities we are building into our infrastructure software.

So MCP server, automation, agentic capabilities. So how are we making it easier to manage, integrate, automate, whether it's our container management platform Rancher, or whether it's Linux or other capabilities. So that's kind of one piece.

Edge and hybrid cloud, et cetera. The other piece is how are we building the best infrastructure, software, and solutions for your AI workloads, whether those be private LLM models that we just talked about. But AI capabilities or workloads increasingly need to be able to scale in a way that we've never done before.

And how do you get Kubernetes to scale in that way? How do you have the security and the policy control that you need? So how do you manage across these different environments?

So there'll be a lot of discussion about that, and you'll hear announcements around both sides of that AI coin. I love it. You mentioned the webinar we did last week, and that was based on this fantastic survey SUSE did.

Yep. A lot of information. One of the things that stuck with me, asking people, "Where do you get your information?

Where do you trust? " That kind of thing. Number one, I think, was still analysts and reports and stuff like that.

Mm-hmm. But number two was industry conferences. Right.

Meeting with my peers, going to industry conferences. As people out here, if you haven't made up your mind, but you can get to Prague for SUSECON. Margaret, where do you think the big hallway conversation...

They could read the agenda. There's great stuff coming. But the hallway conversations, the water cooler stuff, the give and take that takes place in person, what do you think about that at SUSECON?

What do you think those- Yeah ... are going to revolve around? I think the whole reason those conferences and why we still need that human engagement, especially in this AI era, is building trust.

I think a lot of those conversations are going to be, "What can you help me with? " And the great thing is the end users will have partners across all the different, from channel to the ISVs to the SIs, kind of the entire ecosystem. And I think a lot of it is going to be, how are you solving this problem?

What have you seen? Customers talking to customers and saying, "Oh, you did that with SUSE. That's interesting.

" So sharing experiences, sharing those stories and testimonies. And then I'll just tell you, in past years, SUSECON is we're solving problems. We leave that event and there's real work that comes out of that.

That it's like, okay, we're ready to go. But there's something about being face-to-face and having those meetings and going to sessions and hands-on labs and Demo Palooza, and the energy, I think, is going to be amazing. You can feel it at SUSE right now.

I know. Every conversation, there's such amazing energy. But I think at the end of the day, the focus is going to be how do we help each other get to that place that we need to go, whether it's resiliency or innovation or the combination of the two.

And hearing real-world stories and sharing with your peers, that is the power. Absolutely. You kind of jumped the shark on my last question, but let me ask it anyway.

When people leave SUSECON this year, what's the one idea or mindset that you hope they bring back to their teams, and it's contagious? SUSE's got you. We're holding you in our hands.

We can do this with you. We'll help you. Whatever that journey is, we will do that.

And like we say, it's shaping your resilient future together, and I think that is the theme that we want to take away. Margaret, you're one of my favorite people to interview. I got to tell you the truth.

It's a pleasure. I'm really excited. We get there Sunday.

We'll be there all week. Awesome. My video team, our analysts, Mike Rizzardo will be there as well.

And we're going to go share one bottle of really good wine because they have really good wine in Czech Republic. Not only Czech wine, but you get Italian wine everywhere in the Czech Republic. I'm just saying, that's not part of the deal- Okay ...

just to be clear. But- Well ... if someone sees me and you're at SUSECON and you want to go have a good glass of wine, just look me up.

I'm ready. I'm going to hold you to that. Okay.

I just got back from Napa. I'm in a wine sort of mindset anyway, but we're ready. I think it's a Billy Joel song.

" Sorry. I'm confusing. Yeah.

Well, did I ever tell you, he's my neighbor here. Billy Joel is your neighbor? He lives across the- I love this music ...

Intercostal right by me. Okay. Me too.

We're getting completely off track here. All right. We're done.

All right. But Margaret, hey, forget Billy Joel. Forget the wine.

Come to SUSECON. Don't miss it. Thank you, Alan.

It is next Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. We'll be there. Margaret, thank you.

Thank you, always. We're going to take a break on Techstrong TV. We'll be back in a minute.