SUSE Ascendant: Seizing the Digital Sovereignty Moment

Hi, everyone. " I've been waiting all week to interview this woman. My gosh.

It's because we're BFFs. Yes, I know. But I was here Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

Oh, my. I'm sorry. But we finally got you.

I've been so busy. No, it's okay. Okay.

Thank you. I'll be honest with you. Yeah.

It's not like I haven't interviewed other people. I was going to say, it's not like you- Yeah ... haven't been busy.

Yeah. We've been interviewing- Okay ... people.

Margaret Dawson, CMO at SUSECON needs... At SUSECON, at SUSE. We're at SUSECON, needs no introduction to our audience.

We've been talking a lot. Hopefully we'll be talking more. I hope so.

But Margaret- Yeah ... I know it... Well, you're on an adrenaline rush- I am ...

because you literally did keynote this morning. I am, yes. Then another session.

Yep. Now you stop by here. But it's been a week.

It has. It's only three days. It's only three- Wait, what day is it?

But it's been a week. Yeah, it's Thursday. Yeah.

It's Thursday. Yeah. Is it Thursday?

Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking it's Wednesday.

I know. My God. Yes.

So it's been almost a whole week, no kidding around. Yeah. But what a week it's been.

So look, I sit here humbly in the lobby of this, with my little TV set up and talk to everyone. But you have a different view from your vantage point. I have my views.

I've written about them. I've talked about them. Yeah.

Share your views of this week. I will share what I just keep hearing over and over from partners, from customers, which is the energy, that this feels like a new day, a new dawn. Mm.

And it's not that they haven't loved working with SUSE before. They have. Right?

Yeah. " Right? Mm-hmm.

But there is something happening this week, and I think it's everything is coming together. Yeah. And so many people, whether it be partners or customers or maybe even SUSE employees, see a piece of things, right?

It's almost like touching the elephant from a million- Yeah. Right ... kind of thing.

And yet, somehow this week you are seeing the entire picture. Yes. And it's not only a more comprehensive picture, but it's a picture that allows you to see that it is ours to win.

Yeah. And I have said that before, but I am telling you, whether it's digital sovereignty or AI infrastructure or Linux and Multi Linux Manager, Multi Linux Support, Kubernetes, Container Management, everything feels like it's building on each other, and you can see how the future is going to play out. Right?

Yeah. And there's a lot of things that maybe were given to us, or it was timing or whatever. It doesn't matter, but there is definitely an energy here I've never felt.

Absolutely. So my friend Brad Feld, he's done pretty well for himself. He's a venture capitalist.

Yeah. Done a lot of things. I know who Brad Feld is.

" Right. And I do feel like this is SUSE's moment. Yeah.

Not because you stumbled drunkenly or blindly- ... right onto the- Were you at the party last night? Yeah, I was.

Oh, sorry. That was a great party. What a place.

We can talk about that- It was here ... offline. Yeah, okay.

It was a beautiful place. Offline. No, but you arrive at a moment, right?

Right. And not every company... And at some point in everyone's life, we come to a moment- Mm-hmm ...

where you can seize the opportunity, and your life goes in a direction. Right. Or you don't, and it goes in a different direction.

Right. And you may not get another moment like that. Sure.

It's the same thing in the life, I think, of corporations- Mm ... of organizations. You get a moment.

Opportunity knocks. Right. You seize it, or you let it go past.

I really feel this is SUSE's golden ticket. I agree, and we've had those moments before. In fact, I was just talking to someone, when the whole CentOS thing happened.

That was small potatoes, though. It was, but it's an example of we could have done nothing. Right.

Right? And we didn't do nothing. " So then fast-forward, digital sovereignty.

A year, two years ago, when in Europe at least, this really started becoming a bigger conversation, but it was very early. What did we do? We put a tiger team together.

We said, "Go to Brussels, go to France, go to these places. Go talk to people. Find out what's going on.

" So we were. Right. And now we're in every conversation.

Yeah. And we were ahead. We were first, and people are scrambling to kind of catch up.

But we've kind of taken that and run with it and are leading it, frankly. But this- Right? This is why I said to you before about luck, perspiration, and inspiration.

Right. It's that leg work. Right.

You didn't know what the geopolitical- No ... whirlwind is going to cause, to make digital sovereignty- Right ... literally a national sovereignty issue, right?

A- And global ... geopolitical thing. Yeah.

It's the same thing. We all kind of saw AI coming for the last two, three years. Yeah.

But that's the way SUSE's embraced the whole AI piece of this, and open infrastructure. Well, and not only embraced it, but I do think there is someone to be a leader in how the different elements of the AI ecosystem look to open standards. Yes.

I really do, and I've had so many conversations about that this week. But seeing that connection early on, that open infrastructure, open standards, is going to be a key piece of this AI- It's going to be a tension point. Preparation.

Mm-hmm. Perspiration, inspiration, all those- All those -ations ... T-I-O-N's.

Yes. You make your own luck, right? That's right.

And that's the key kind of thing here. So, the- It's kind of like a rolling stone gathers moss, or what is that saying? Like, I really- Gathers no moss, but a snowball.

Yeah. You're talking about a snowballing effect. That's a good way of...

Yeah, exactly. These things are coming together, and they're bigger and bigger. And in the grand scheme of things, CentOS is a little thing.

Sure. We're talking about Earth... We're talking about SUSE having the ability- Here's what I'll say that someone said to me that I love.

" European-based. Right. But global.

Correct. That's where the gap in the market is. Correct.

There is Google, there is Apple, there is- There are a lot of Google... I mean, Google. There are a lot of global technology platform leaders.

There's seven or eight. But if you combine things to have a European-based technology leader that is also open. Look, there was a time Google was open, right?

There was a time even, well- Google did a lot with Kubernetes, so I've got to give them major points. Yeah, no, and they did it their way. And they actually still do a lot with open standards.

They did it with Android, too. Yeah. Sometimes they regret it, but that's another story.

But no, all kidding aside, SUSE has the potential, the opportunity to ascend. That's why I showed you that. To ascend those peaks.

I agree. Now- The ingredients are all there ... don't let it go to your head, though, kid.

Okay. Because there's still work to be done. Really?

Yeah. Oh, I think Monday my day job happens. Exactly.

I have to catch up on email. So let's start talking about that, though, because- Okay ... one has to ask what's next?

Well, I think we have to deliver against all of the things happening, right? Like we said, digital sovereignty is an amazing conversation. We have the right tech stack.

We have the right sovereign support. We still have to be working with customers, whether it be government or private enterprise. There's a lot of work still to be done there, right?

And I don't think anyone knows exactly how that's going to evolve, right? And there's a need for even open standards and the whole conversation- Yes ... around open source and sovereignty.

So, that is just underway. AI sovereignty as well. And then you've got sovereign AI.

So where is AI bumping into sovereignty, right? All this stuff is intersecting. It's like some massive Venn diagram.

So that's one. AI, early days, and like I'm saying, my biggest focus right now is if you look at the things we're doing around agentic, around MCP, around open standards, around gateways, et cetera, those are all directionally the right thing. We're putting more and more into our platform to accommodate that.

We're working with a broader ecosystem. We're making it, this is the infrastructure for your AI workloads. But all of that, this is going to be the next one to five years, where we really start to see production-ready AI workloads in the enterprise.

AI time, it's one to two years. Five years, I can't even imagine. Well, it's going to be a whole new- Robots may be sitting here instead of you and I.

Yeah. But, I again- Yes, my avatar will be here, and I'll be at the beach. Exactly.

Well, let's hope so. It'll be great. I'll be honest.

But, you still have to do the keynote. But, no, seriously, that is- There was a dog, a robotic dog did the keynote. I saw the robotic dog.

I know. So there could be a robotic Margaret. So I got to tell you, I saw those.

That was Veeam's dog or Veeam's robot, and I saw them at RSAC. They had a little man robot at RSAC who was walking around saying hello to- Oh, cute. But did you notice that dog, like you sensed it having a personality?

Yes. Isn't that weird how we do that? They do.

But why, you don't think your AI has a personality? Oh, 100%. Yeah.

My AI knows I'm brilliant every day. I really appreciate it. Mine knows.

I think they all went to the same school. I was going to say, Toss? I think they all went to the same school, too.

Yeah. Who's ever training that model, got a- Did a hell of a job ... because it makes up for our childhoods.

We're getting validated every day. It's funny. You forget what we do with AI.

One of the biggest uses of AI is companionship. Oh, no, don't... Do not.

Oh, companion. I thought you were going to say therapy. " No, don't do therapy- Don't do that ...

because people are winding up dead. Can we make that clear here? Don't do that.

No. No. No, but- Oh, companionship.

I can see that ... there's a lot of lonely people in this world. Do you know what's so funny?

Okay. Your audience has to go watch this Saturday Night Live skit. It was ages ago when Alexa first came out.

Uh-huh. And it was called Alexa Silver. It was a joke, right?

Yes. " Uh-huh. " Because that's all they want.

They just want someone to listen to them. Hey, don't laugh. It could be us in a couple of years.

That's why you do this job. Absolutely. Everybody has to listen to you all day long.

You think- I'm just kidding I'm not. And you get to talk, and you get to talk, and you get to meet people. You should ask my wife.

She'll tell you. I like to hear myself talk. Yeah.

Well, there you go. It's perfect. All right.

Back to SUSECON. But here's the thing, though. " Hmm.

And that's another thing- That's true ... I wanted to mention here. Yeah.

SUSE can't do this alone. Oh, yeah. Digital sovereignty's a big, big job.

Takes a village. It takes a big village, actually. With big friends.

Yeah. And working with AWS, and I know we're going to have an AWS person here shortly. Well, yeah.

You heard that investment number, right? 5 billion in sovereign cloud. Yeah.

That's a commitment. With a B. With a B.

Though, in today's world, a billion here, a billion there, before you know it. 5 billion is a statement. Right.

But companies like Lenovo and companies, you could go through all of the- Dell is a wonderful partner. HP. The thing that I looked at, and I'll go back to why is this energy so great, why is everyone saying this is the most incredible SUSECON yet?

Mm-hmm. Some of it is look who's on stage. We've had AMD.

Yep. Nvidia. Nvidia.

Fujitsu. Yep. Dell, AWS.

Those are just the five partners that were on the keynote stage. I spoke to every one of them. There you go.

You're on- I'm on it. And then you look at the ecosystem that's all around here from all over the world. I've spoken to partners from literally every country, almost, in Europe, from the United States, from Canada, from Latin America- Asia, Australia ...

Asia Pacific, Japan, Australia. So, even though we're sitting here in beautiful Prague, this is a global event and is a global ecosystem. Yeah.

And I think that's what you're feeling. I think another thing to remember, look, the big guys, they get the headlines. Right.

But the ecosystem, I spoke to, I forgot who it was, one of the AI channels. Well, they're the ones hand-in-hand with customers, right? I know, but you've got MSPs.

Yeah. This company, FIS, a ASP, I don't know if you know them- Yeah, I do ... in Germany.

I do. They're running four data centers. Right.

They're an MSSP. Huge. It's big.

Service integrators, from the big guys to the- Yep ... local guys. Yep.

That's the preparation, perspiration point. Putting together an A to Z channel partnership or a channel partner program. And that's what I actually- Not just the big guys.

That's right. I actually spoke to, we had a partner breakfast this morning, and I was speaking to, goodness, there were probably 100 partners in that room. Yeah.

And the one thing they asked us to do is could you start bridging your partner ecosystem? " Right. Layer it in.

" Put it together as a solution group. Right. And so they're seeing the value in SUSE playing that bridge.

I think we could always have done that, but I think the fact we're getting that pull- Not at this level ... from the partners is really exciting to me. I'm going to tell you something else.

Okay. Just between us. Oh, and the cameras and the- No one's watching.

Okay. Just the way you attacked, and I mean the word attacked, the virtualization issue. Mm-hmm.

In years past, SUSE was a very polite European company who would never pull the tiger's tail and say, "Hey, there's a reason why you need to look at SUSE virtualization. " If you've got 86% of organizations looking to reduce their VMware footprint, we should be there to catch it and help them, 100%. But they never had the- I know, but you've got to poke the snake sometimes, as I say.

And that's a different SUSE than in years past. And I think that, right there, that's a big difference that people see that. When Frank talked about that- Right.

Yeah ... I saw people coming down these steps behind us and walking here, and I heard them talking. " Yeah.

" And we look at how, I spoke to your partners, Veeam. Yeah. And a couple of the others.

Migration, just a simple migration to a modernization, to a transformation. But I think this goes back to what you were saying a minute ago. We're not just pulling the tiger's tail or whatever it is, or coming out with these new bold assertions and plans and initiatives because we just think it's a good idea.

The customers and partners and market- Are asking for it ... are saying, and not just asking, they're begging, saying, "SUSE, make more noise. " I agree.

And so I'm like, "I hear you. " Fortune- We're trying. Fortune favors the bold.

Right. I think that's the saying. I don't know.

It is. It probably sounds better in Chinese. Okay.

I'm just saying. I was going to go with- Which if my Chinese was better, I could say it No, Mike Falardeau- ... and I'll come back at you that way ...

always says it in Gaelic, but whatever. There you go. Gaelic.

It probably sounds good in Gaelic, too. But fortune does favor the bold, and if that's a word, I think we could describe SUSE at this conference. And I think you can be bold and still collaborative.

Sometimes that word bold- Not arrogant. Correct. And there is still a humility, and I do think this is important, that is our heritage that I think is important, and we don't want to lose that.

And I think that's where that rough- Well, that's part of that European heritage. And I love that. It's one of the reasons I came here, because there is sometimes that arrogance that comes with tech companies.

You don't say? Yeah, a little bit. I've never run into that.

Not that I've ever met any tech bros in my entire life. No. No, but I- A lot of them used to be up in Redmond, but that's a whole other story.

Oh, stop. That was not a nice story. Well, I'm a child of the '90s.

All right. Well- They traumatized me. I'm sorry that you've been traumatized.

But they're not like that anymore, in all honesty. They've come around. Okay.

There are others. There are a lot of excellent big companies. That's what I'll say.

Yeah. I've had a lot of great opportunities in my career, so I'm not going to badmouth anyone. No.

But my point is, I think there is a balance of being bold, being courageous- Yes ... and still being humble and knowing that it takes a village- And that's the key ... for you to get there.

And I think that that combination of characteristics is SUSE. Agreed. So Monday starts preparations for next year's SUSECON.

Absolutely. That's right. Get ready.

What can we expect? I don't know. This week is kind of- You have to top this.

I know. That's what I'm saying. So we thought we had a plan.

I'm asking the team to maybe back up a little bit and rethink the plan. So in the next two weeks, we'll come out. Okay.

You'll be the first to know. Promise? We'll let you know.

I promise. Oh, you say that to all the guys. I promise.

Yeah, they're everywhere. Yeah. Anyway, Margaret, we're going to take a 30 second break- Okay ...

as we bring in a person here from AWS- Great ... Anu, and we're going to continue our discussion. Sounds good.

All right. We're going to be right back. You're watching Techstrong TV.

It's day three in Prague.