SUSE’s New CMO Margaret Dawson Discusses Digital Sovereignty and the Evolution of Marketing

Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Tech Shark tv. You know, I gotta tell you the truth, we almost didn't do this interview 'cause my next guest and I just started talking, and I don't know, it was, it was hard to get pulled back into the interview mode.

But I want to introduce you to the newly minted CMO at Seuss. Her name is Margaret Dawson. She joins us today from London, but she's based in Washington State.

So all over the place a bit. As Seus says, Seuss is a global company. Hey Margaret, welcome to Tech Drunk tv.

Congratulations on the job on the new position, and it's great to have you here. Thank you, Alan. It is wonderful to be with you.

I'm still trying to figure out what minted feels like. It sounds painful a little bit. I mean, I, I hopefully not, but um, Yeah, I guess it could or could.

Where did We get that? Oh, it's because minted when, when coins like a coin are newly minted, right? Yeah, yeah.

Yes. Newly minted. Yeah.

So you become forever, forever in a coin. No, it's been awesome. And yes, I'm in London and yes, we are global.

So, um, I probably spent about 50% of my time on the road, so it's wonderful, wonderful to be here in person. I love watching your show. Thank you.

I we love having Seuss people on. I've had some amazing times interviewing my friends from Seuss, especially, we were in Orlando last year for, for se k. Yep.

And what a good time that was. Anyway, Margaret, there are people sitting out here, younger people than me who were saying, how, how, how did she get this job? What was her path?

How can I follow that path? I would, you know, you a role model you're, you know, for, for people to look up to. Give us an idea of your, of your journey.

Margaret. That is a great question. I like to say it's the crooked path to success.

Um, I've actually spoken to a lot of college students and young professionals, you know, who assume you have this perfect, beautiful roadway to success that they can all follow. Um, you know, I've had a path that has crossed everything from journalism and communication. So I started my career early in, uh, as a foreign correspondent in Asia.

Uh, really. And I ended up falling in love with the technology industry. 1 time I was sitting there in an interview, you know, going away on my laptop and I thought, I wanna be on that side, you know, not this side.

com back in Seattle and just kept learning as much as I could. And I found maybe that natural curiosity that journalists have, uh, paid off. Um, I also happen to love muscle cars.

I grew up in the automotive industry, so I like to say I like to lift up the hood and see how things work. And just over time I took more and more, um, complicated roles. I started doing more technology roles.

So I got into product management at Microsoft and somehow that all came together and ended up leading all of marketing. Um, but I've taken some weird diversions too. I've been a chief of staff to A CEO twice.

Um, so kind of played that role and learned the entire business and had to run strategy. And I just, I love work. I love people.

I love building businesses. I would say I'm a true capitalist, but I love also figuring out like, what is the problem we're trying to solve and how do we help customers be successful? And then bringing that all together.

I love it. What a story. I feel like we just scratch the surface.

I'm gonna need an hour to jump into each of These. Oh, any direction on that one? How could you look under the hood of a muscle car today?

There's nothing to see. Okay. If you're gonna start on that, you're gonna get my bailiwick about the El Electric Mustang, which is just Ford Motor Company.

I love you. I'm a Ford girl. But you ruined a brand an a Mustang.

Such An iconic brand. Well, they made it an SUV. I know.

It's not even a Mustang. I I'm warning you don't get down this path. Alright.

But can't let, But the good news is you open it up and you know how to look at an integrated circuit. So I feel okay. It's all right.

Well, there, There is that note to self, don't, don't take her down the muscle car path. Margaret, let me ask, let me ask you this then. How did you come to Seuss?

So Susa, which I, you know, in your past interview, So are you, you pronounce this wrong, Seuss, every single time you talked to her? 'cause I, I, I'm, I'm not making excuses. Okay.

But I gotta a tell you the truth. Okay. Tell me the truth.

I was on with, I've always said it is Susa a lot, but I was on with Imron a couple of weeks ago. Yes. And you know who he is, right?

I do. And I asked him, Imron, is it Susa or Seuss? And he said, oh no, it's Seuss.

I said, oh my God, I've been saying You're wrong. You said, is it Suse? Ora Susa?

And he said, Susa. And now, no, he Said Sus shortens it To sus like, you know, you're sussing something out like something. But, you know, Say, love you anyway, again for me.

Susa. Okay. Susa.

Susa. It's German. Almost.

If I with an A at the end. Yes. Because the E has that German pronunciation.

So it's the true Susa. Susa said straight. I mean, I Just said it like an Italian.

I don't know why. I think it's because we were talking about wine, so like Susa. Shh.

But don't do that. Oh, sorry, we're not supposed to Talk about that. No, it's okay.

We, no, we're allowed to talk about where over 20 wine, Margaret. We talk about why barely. I'm barely over 21.

Yeah, I was gonna say I am, but okay. Susa it is. So what brought you to Susa?

So, um, a few things. One is, fortunately I know quite a few people here. I mean, as you know, the technology industry is small, the open source kind of ecosystem is even smaller.

Um, and I had a lot of friends here, including the CEO, uh, dp and I worked together at a previous company. And so honestly, it was my network. Uh, the CEO reached out said, we're looking for a new CMO.

Uh, and originally I thought he just wanted my help finding one, because I work with a lot of CEOs at different stages of companies and help them figure out, you know, what would be the right kind of marketing leader. You know, I reach into my network. But in this case, we just kept talking.

I started meeting other leaders. So literally it was just someone I knew, which I always tell young people, it's still the network, your parents network, your network, whoever it is. Um, but then what kind of sucked me in was the combination of really going back to those, those roots of open source.

I am a true believer in the power of open source and the communities and the way that technology is built and, and distributed and used. Um, it was about infrastructure. Like I'm a total infrastructure geek.

I, you know, I fell in love with OpenStack, which if people know that open source project, they will probably giggle. Um, but I started in network security and storage and, you know, so I just, I love the stack. I love infrastructure.

Um, I love how it continues to be the foundation. Um, so the people leadership, open source, the technology. And then I would say the opportunity, there are very few software companies that are still on the path to a billion dollars.

And while I can't reveal our revenue, 'cause we're private, you can look at our last public, you know, reading when we were, uh, public through Frankfurt. Um, and it's not surprising to see that, that we're that size of company. And to be able to join a company and get to that level of scale.

And I've worked literally across from seed startups all the way to 5 billion. This inflection point is really exciting, right? How you scale a company to 1 billion, 2 billion, 5 billion and make sure you're continuously adding value to customers is really hard.

So it was a combination of all those things that I just got more and more interested and excited about the opportunity and the role that I could play. Excellent. You know, Margaret, I, I'm glad you brought it up about suse.

A lot of people, a lot of people have a lot of different notions of who SUSE is, what they do, where they play. I think for most people still, oh yeah, they're a Linux dis show, right? They make a Linux dis show, and, and Linux is great, it's free.

But you know, the, there's, of course there's the Red Hats and the Ubuntu and the Debbie, you know, there's many Linux, Susu, other people say Sus. Oh yeah, that's that European company, right? I've heard that.

Especially, especially in today's world. Mm-hmm. And, and that's not necessarily a bad thing mm-hmm.

That it's a European company. But, we'll, we'll get more into that. But suse is certainly so much more than another Linux disco.

They, they've added so many pieces and they've also grown organically, right? So many mm-hmm. New features, pieces of the puzzle here from where you sit, if you can brief, you know, kind of bring it all together for our audience.

Yeah. Who su Sarah and what do you guys do now? I'm so in love that you asked this question because I feel like as the CMO, this is always the first thing I ask, right?

You go into a company and say, you know, what is Susa? What do we do? Why should people care?

So SUSE is, at the end of the day, an enterprise software company. You know, we deliver software and services for enterprises to improve, you know, how they're delivering applications and services to their customers. Everything we do is based on that open source development model, right?

So we take open source software, we make it secure, reliable, sovereign, whatever it is that you need to do scalable. Um, and we do that across multiple platforms. You're right, we're still a Linux company, right?

That was our foundation. That's our baby. It was what we were born with.

Um, we have added, you know, Kubernetes distribution. So we have a container management platform. We have our suse AI platform.

We have a SUSE Edge solution. So regardless of what technology we're doing, I like to think of it, we do it from everything from traditional on-prem. You know?

'cause people are still having to make things better, cheaper, faster in their existing on-prem technology, you know, through containers, through cloud, multi-cloud, all the way to edge and beyond. Um, so I like to say we meet customers where they are with our solutions. And importantly, I think one of the things that people don't realize about suse is we really do try to provide choice for our customers no matter what technologies they have.

So I think what is different about SUSE is let's say you have, you know, 12 different operating systems or versions of operating systems. We also provide a management layer where you can have one management for all of that. We don't care what the brands are, we don't care what version it is, we will help you manage it and support it, by the way.

So you can kind of have more one throat to choke or just a simplified cost-effective management and support of all those heterogeneous environments, whether it be Linux, Kubernetes, or containers, you know, and more so that ability to manage very complex environments is something customers are dying for. Because nobody has a single thread. They just don't.

We, we've grown into very complex environments. So one of our kind of, you know, differentiations is that let us simplify where you are today. Let's simplify and, and optimize your existing tech and move you to the future.

Let's move some of that money, and then we can do that with you too, by the way. Sure, sure. You know, one, one thing you, you didn't go too deep on, but I want to mention, we, we mentioned my interview a couple weeks ago with Imran, and that was around this whole IT sovereignty issue, which is really becoming huge, huge around the world.

Yes. Right. Um, people wanna know what's the extent, where, where does the wall that the government can't reach into?

Where is that wall? And the changes, depending where you are, but it's not as easy as you think. Just 'cause you're not in the US doesn't mean the US can't get to it.

China, everywhere Else. 100% Seuss is in a unique position. Mm-hmm.

So when I think of se SUSE two, I said it in passing earlier, it's a European company. Mm-hmm. But they truly, their roots are in Europe, though.

They're a global powerhouse. Their roots are in Europe. And they, you know, in my, and I encourage you all to go back and check out my interview with him, right?

SU's developing kind of their own data centers, right? Where, where sovereignty, you have real certainty and real visibility into your sovereignty options, where even the support personnel can be based in specific geographies and everything else. So in a world that's increasingly balkanized mm-hmm.

Or becoming balkanized, I, I think that is a huge advantage for suse. Especially when you say, okay, well, who's my competition there? Mostly all US based firms, right?

Who are subject to us jurisdiction. Right? Yeah.

It's interesting. I'm the only American on the executive team, right? So it's been really interesting as I get to know the different perspectives with our global customer base, right.

And kind of, yeah, learning about more of the, the European, um, priorities. I, I would first say, you're right. I think digital sovereignty is a global issue, right?

We, we tend to put it on the EU a lot because it's making the most noise right now, but it really is something people are looking at, at a micro level, like at a company level all the way to a state or region or country, right? So it, it's really multifaceted. I I think the advantage that we bring is a couple things.

One is our own technology, like you're saying, how we're addressing that with our people, our technology, our ecosystem is critical. You know, you still have a lot of the, the big cloud players that are trying to solve this as well. But you've got this growing ecosystem of regional players and, and, you know, um, regional sis that we are also partnering with, right?

So, yes, I think it's important that we can't do this alone. You've gotta have partners, you've gotta have the ecosystem. Um, and we're trying to build communities both in the open source world and, and overall to kind of come together with this, because it really does take a village, um, to successfully achieve true digital sovereignty in whatever form, um, that particular entity needs.

Um, but it's something that's impacting everything from private, you know, enterprise all the way through the most complex government agencies. Um, and you should assume we're in all those conversations right now, not only in the European Union or the uk, but throughout the world. Yeah.

No, I, digital sovereignty, yes, you're right. We focus on the eu, but you know, each nation has its own digital sovereignty kind of issues and outlook. I mean, Canada, so that's certainly Canada has always been huge there, right?

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Though, it, it's more huge.

It's, it's, I don't wanna say huger, I don't know if that's a word, but it's huge. It's bigger now. It's bigger now than it was, I would say certainly say it's more compelling people.

And we found pretty periods of history. I would love to say this is the first time this has been brought up, but I remember early in cloud computing. Yeah.

You know, when people started using these hyperscalers, I would go to conferences. I'm talking back in even 2012 era. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, but in cloud it was ages ago.

It, people were saying, well, wait, so if I put my data in your cloud, can I control what region it's in, what data center is in? And they'd be like, no. Like, you know, because the whole thing was cost effectiveness and speed at that point Point.

It was one and more first cloud. Correct. I started a company in Boulder, Colorado, 2001.

The original name of the company, company was Lattice Networks. Oh. 'cause we believed that applications would be LA and on a lattice, like a framework and they would be below Yeah.

Distributed distributed systems. Yeah. Right.

And you would be able to move them. You don't want to be in Japan, fine. We'll move you to Korea.

You know, and and so forth. It was a little early. We wound up pivoting and became a security company.

But that's for, that's for Prague over wine. Yes. Let me, let me, let me bring us back to our, our agenda here.

So that's certainly a big opportunity. I, you know, having also been involved in many companies like you, you don't want to drown in a sea of opportunity though. So when you look at suse, what are the biggest opportunities, the ones that you've gotta focus on as to not drown in a sea of opportunity?

I think that's a great question. I mean, digital sovereignty is absolutely a massive opportunity for us. But obviously everyone is talking about ai and I think our opportunity there is providing the infrastructure in which to run AI workloads, you know, reliably, securely and at scale.

Which is something that is becoming increasingly complex as, you know. Um, I think also our opportunity, honestly is, is where I started before, is that everyone that you talk to that runs technology operations is still trying to optimize, reduce cost, you know, make what they have better, faster, smarter, whatever. Um, everyone is still trying to containerize.

I I think we always think that that containerization is, is very, very mature. Last I saw, we're still at about 15% of enterprise apps are containerized. That is massive green space.

Right? And so the opportunity is that journey, that opportunity is meeting the customer where they are helping them move to the future. 'cause everyone has to integrate ai.

Everybody has to figure out whether they're hybrid cloud or they're digital sovereignty, or if they're, you know, globally distributed. I mean, most applications are decentralized and distributed in the very nature of their architecture. But this is really a, a complex time.

And, and I think our opportunity is sitting down with our customers, being that partner. And I'll tell you, like, I love working for a company where I hear from customers, I like working with you. And no matter what we do, I feel like we forget this.

I've always said, you know, the killer app and digital transformation was human connection. I think the digital app or the killer app and AI is still that human connection. No matter how big we get or how great our technology is, if people don't trust us, don't wanna work with us, don't like get on a whiteboard and figure out the architecture, we won't win.

So that is the opportunity is partnering with organizations and showing like, you know, you don't wanna rip and replace. Okay, cool. How do we just help you where you are and help you get to where you need to be?

It, it doesn't sound like magic sauce, but honestly, that, that is the opportunity. I love that. I gotta be honest with you.

I love it. No, I do too. That's why I'm here.

I know, Absolutely. But, but even, you know, I'm in the middle of writing an article now. They estimate half of the GDP growth this year in the US is data centers in ai.

Mm-hmm. It's a bubble uhhuh. And I've been in bubbles.

You've been in bubbles. It's very familiar. You know, don't tell me it's a new paradigm.

And this is the new normal. I've heard that before. Mm-hmm.

I, I, I've got a wallpaper full of stock certificates from companies. Right. But, excuse me, I think that, um, but as, as we, as we look at what's going on in, in, in the world with AI and all of the crazy amounts of money, it it, it is, it's good to hear that we still have to keep the human in the loop.

I, I've spoken and written about this as well. Yep. Humans in the loop, if it's not about the humanity, if we lose our humanity.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I, I did a shimmy says a couple weeks ago where it's ironic that at a time where we're trying to make our software more humane mm-hmm.

Right? And, and, and more like humans, we're, we're, we at the same time are trying to be less human. Yeah.

Less than, and it, it just, I'm, I'm glad to hear you say that. No, I, I, yeah. I I love that human in the loop.

And, and I would say the vast majority of people working in the AI industry would say that same thing. Right? And the vast majority of people who are trying to implement AI or have implemented AI in their, in their organization, would tell you, we're not replacing people, especially right now.

It's not about replacing people. It's about how do I use this technology just like we have always said to make us more productive, allow us to focus on things that matter more, allow us to have more time to do this and, and less time doing, you know, menial tasks that are routine and, and repetitive. That is what AI does wonderfully.

Right. And I agree with you. I, I mean, we could go back to the industrial revolution, right?

You know, automating manufacturing was going to remove humans from the process. You know, what did it allow us to do? Think more about design, think more about, you know, fuel efficiency, think more about other safety in vehicles, right?

Um, I, maybe I'm a pragmatist. Maybe I'm a, you know, an optimist, probably both. But I do truly believe that ai, like every other amazing technological revolution that we've had, or evolution, gives humans an opportunity to approach the future in a better way.

And to use our unique ability to interact with each other, you know, and become even better humans. So yes, if we miss this opportunity, we've lost a lot more, you know, than just work, you know, work or, or, or headcount. Um, so I, I guess in some way, you could say there's more at stake, but I, I don't think it's this, you know, Armageddon, that, that everyone is positioning it.

And I agree this bubble's gonna pop just like every other bubble. Um, I think when companies are valued by the amount of money they have raised, we've already broken the model. com, it blew up.

I Was there. I know. We're, We're doing it now with ai, we, okay, a company has gotten a billion dollars in funding, so they're worth 36 billion.

I'm like, that's not actually math, but, you know, I'm a purist and come Valuation and wait, and I'm gonna make a deal to buy $300 billion worth of GPUs later. But I'm gonna do it with Bitcoin, so it'll be perfect. Yeah.

We'll say again, something to talk about in Prague. But, but let me, let me, let me bring us back again. This is a hard question.

Mm-hmm. This is probably one of the hardest question I'm going to give you here today. Okay.

In your role as in your position as CMO, how do you see the role of marketing, ah, to enable, to empower, to reach these goals, these ideals, the, the, the promise of what SUSE can, can bring to market? I love this question. Marketing has fundamentally changed, and I don't think everyone's caught up with that.

Uh, I mean, marketing technology, budgets alone now, rival CIOs, technology budgets, right? I mean, my MarTech stack is massive. Um, but I would keep it really simple, and my team is gonna laugh when they hear this because this is my mantra.

Marketing has to bring the voice of the customer and the voice of the market in technology. Companies love nothing more than to just think they're selling product, like just talk product. And I call it product out instead of customer in.

So our opportunity is truly listening and doing research and, you know, being that voice of the customer and understanding what their top challenges are, what is their pain, right? And how we can then align our solutions to that. And you do that through, you know, telling stories, through, you know, making sure you're meeting customers, you know, where they're showing up, delivering content in a very dynamic, personalized way.

Um, you know, I, I keep asking like, what is a website in this day and age or in three years? No one is, I mean, people are gonna always be searching for content, but where they find it is changing. So our job is just amazingly smart, dynamic, responsive, personalized content, wherever that person is looking and, And how they consume it.

I mean, absolutely. Because now you're in my neighborhood, right? Video Yeah.

Video. Like the, I mean, we're working on some things. ai.

Yep. Um, right. In our lifetimes market, you, I'm a little older than you, but you know, we've seen us go from buying magazines on a bookshelf, right.

To EAs on the web mm-hmm. To, you know, maybe more dynamic now with video and Rich, rich media and all that stuff. But it's still that kind of thing where you come to a front page and there's sort of categories and a table of contents, right?

I, I think ai, I think people want a better way of consuming A hundred percent The information. They, and they want to get to that information quicker. I'm working on some things I, I'll tell you about 'em offline, but Yeah.

No, I think this is a really important point. And I think how it impacts marketing is people still talk about marketing as is this perfect linear funnel, right? Like, someone comes to your homepage, they read an article, they convert, they fill out a form, nobody buys anything, or, or, you know, does research that way.

I always say the funnel is a hairball. Um, and people are interacting in all different points. And marketing's job is to like, find them and touch them, engage with them, you know, wherever they are in that hairball in all different forms.

And whether that's generational or whether it's, you know, location, whether it's whatever, we have to figure out all of those pieces. And people want information faster, they wanna consume it in different ways, and they just want it in like bite-sized pieces, right? Yes.

And so, you know, no one's gonna read a 30 page white paper, white paper, right? And yet we're still writing 30 page white papers, right. They're not gonna watch an hour video.

Your timeframe is perfect. 20, 30 minutes is max, right? Some people five tops, Right?

Yeah. Well, no, truth be told, we take this video and through the magic of ai, we, we do two minute segments of it, 45 second segments of it, because this is what, this is what the audience, this is how they want to consume it. And then for those people who wanna listen to the whole 30 minutes, we make that available too.

And, and thank you for listening for 30 minutes. Right. But you, you know, you gotta give them what they want, not what you think.

That's Right. No, I think marketing is really at the intersection of all of this, right? Because we are both, you know, trying to understand what customers need, and we are having to integrate AI in everything, like every marketing tool, you will hear them say, you know, we're using ai, it's at different levels of advancement, but at the end of the day, whatever technology helps us do that thing that we're talking about, which is just meeting the customer, giving them what they need, giving them.

And it's not easy. It's really, it's not easy. No, no.

It's that. And I think on top of that, we still need to tell great stories. Mm-hmm.

You know, at the end of the day, the thing that hasn't changed and why I love marketing is that we have to take all this complexity from the product and the market and, you know, all these different things and just tell a great story, right? Which is, you know, I love some of the Simon Sinek stuff, which is, you know, like, why change, why now, why SUSE is one way you could talk about it, that is still fundamentally how we need to talk to people. Like, why do you even wanna talk to me?

What is your problem? And why am I relevant? And why should you work with me instead of the thousands, you know, of other companies that you have?

And I'm gonna take that full circle. We can have great technology, but why are you gonna work with me? Because there's something about me and the promise that I'm giving as part of this company that makes you feel like I wanna work with them.

I trust that company, technology, you know, let's grow together. I love it. We're gonna end it right here, Margaret, that's a great ending.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Hey, I wish you nothing but a much, much, much lot, lot, lot of success at, and we will continue this conversation. We don't have to wait till April and Prague. I hopefully I'll see you.

Exactly. I don't know. Are you gonna be a cube con?

I will be a cube con. Yes. It's meet There we are.

We are. Live with a cube con on the floor. Come find us.

We, we'll, um, that is live. Good. Let's do it.

Um, so we'll have fun there. I'll, I'll have your people call my people, my people. All right.

I will call your people perfect. Or we'll have an AI talk to you. I was just Gonna say you can Yeah.

My Gen AI agent. Yeah. Yeah.

I think I have a person. I don't think I have people. I Don't, I don't even have a full person.

I don't know, but, uh Oh, yeah. Okay. Have your half person.

I hope it's a good Half. Yeah. Uh, but we'll make it happen.

Excellent. Margaret Dawson, CMO of suse. Thank you.

Here on Text Drunk tv. Cheers. Thank you.

All right, we'll be back with more. You're watching Text Drunk tv.