Cutting-edge technologies, led by artificial intelligence, are reshaping the future. Companies face critical IT choices in the journey to digital transformation as they consider their digital options for future innovation.
SHANGHAI, Sept. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- SUSE, a global leader in open-source enterprise solutions, today hosted SUSECON China 2024. The event, focused on the theme of "Cloud-Edge Integration and Boundless AI," brings together industry experts and technology leaders to explore cloud-native solutions, edge computing, and generative AI best practices to help businesses gain a competitive edge. Held in Shanghai, SUSECON China 2024 highlighted the latest technology trends and best practices, demonstrating how open-source platforms can be used to build secure, enterprise-level AI architectures, and how cloud-edge integration is driving digital transformation across industries.
SUSE Continues Empowering China with Open Source
A global leader in open-source enterprise solutions, headquartered in Germany, SUSE has been committed to the China market for 20 years, continually delivering innovative and secure open-source solutions that empower Chinese companies to lead and thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace.
In his opening remarks, SUSE CEO Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen emphasized how recent IT outages have underscored the increased reliance on technology and the critical need for freedom of choice, saying "We are committed to unlocking the limitless potential of open source and giving you the freedom to choose your own technology solutions."
Alan Chan, President of SUSE Greater China, delivered a keynote speech, "Choice Happens," reiterating SUSE's commitment to choice and helping companies successfully navigate the digital landscape. In today's unpredictable market, he said, businesses need flexible, independent solutions. SUSE's open source innovations empower enterprises with more choices, without the need to be locked into a single vendor. As an example, Chan highlighted SUSE Liberty Linux, introduced after the discontinuation of CentOS services. This solution allows users to stay on CentOS and other Linux distributions without migrating, ensuring enterprise applications remain secure and stable, with enterprise-level support to ensure business continuity.
SUSE has consistently been at the forefront of driving enterprise-grade digital transformation through innovative open source technology. To support companies in building private AI systems, SUSE launched SUSE AI – a secure, modular, vendor and LLM-agnostic GenAI platform. This platform is built on SUSE's industry-leading products: SUSE Linux, Rancher Prime, and NeuVector Prime. Companies can run their AI systems on premises or in the cloud, with complete autonomy to select the most suitable LLM, a cost-effective approach that ensures their data remains private and meets compliance standards.
SUSE has also significantly enhanced the observability of its cloud-native management platform, Rancher Prime, with the acquisition of StackState, renowned for its cloud-native observability. StackState provides full-stack, end-to-end monitoring capabilities; automatically generates dependency maps between applications, microservices, and infrastructure resources; and offers troubleshooting guides, dynamic dashboards, and time-travel features. These capabilities help businesses monitor and manage large-scale cloud-native applications in real-time, improving efficiency and stability.
SUSE's comprehensive solutions – ranging from infrastructure to cloud-native and edge computing – help local enterprises tackle complex digital transformation challenges. For example, a major international shipping and logistics company, headquartered in Hong Kong, recently experienced rapid growth, expanding from a few dozen Kubernetes cluster nodes to over 500. This required the company to build their containerisation management ability to manage complex hybrid cloud environments, dual-active architecture, and quick response times for application launches, all while safeguarding against cyberattacks. SUSE provided a cloud-native architecture blueprint, along with consulting and solutions like Rancher Prime and NeuVector, helping the company build a secure, efficient, and scalable cloud-native platform in just over two years.
Harnessing Cloud-Edge Integration and AI
Businesses undergoing digital transformation face challenges integrating modern applications, managing distributed architectures, handling evolving security threats, and adopting generative AI. SUSE's four core technologies – cloud native, edge computing, enterprise-level Linux, and SUSE AI – are helping effectively address these issues, explained Vishal Ghariwala, SUSE's APAC CTO.
SUSE's APAC team shared further product highlights at the event. SUSE's Rancher Prime cloud-native platform unifies the management of virtual machines and containers, speeding up the modernization of critical applications and optimizing delivery across core, cloud, and edge environments. It also rapidly integrates generative AI capabilities, such as AI assistants, into its offerings. For edge computing, SUSE Edge simplifies managing and scaling distributed architectures, ensuring operational consistency and robust security to keep edge applications running efficiently. SUSE Liberty Linux provides seamless migration patches and continuous security updates, addressing rising security threats and maintaining system stability. Finally, SUSE AI offers a modular, private platform that lets businesses choose their own generative AI models, ensuring data privacy and compliance while driving business innovation and growth.
SUSE Embraces a New Era of Cloud-Native and Edge Computing
As the Internet of Things (IoT) and digital transformation accelerate, a new era of cloud-native and edge computing has arrived. Edge deployments, driven by the demand for cluster management, have become increasingly important. In her speech, Katerina Arzhayev, Director of Edge Solutions at SUSE, noted the three core advantages of SUSE Edge: scalability and flexibility, automation and efficiency, and security and compliance. These capabilities help businesses respond flexibly to complex edge computing environments, streamline operations, and ensure data security.
For key industries like retail and manufacturing, SUSE provides standardized containerization to meet the advanced security requirements of distributed edge systems, along with cloud-edge collaboration across clouds, core data centers, and the edge. SUSE also provides a full suite of solutions and services, including consulting, design, deployment, commercialization, and ongoing support, helping enterprises overcome edge computing challenges and accelerate digital transformation.
Co-Creating the Future: SUSE Partners to Drive Industry Innovation
At SUSECON China 2024, SUSE teamed up with leading industry partners to present innovative solutions that drive digital transformation and intelligent upgrades across industries. In cloud-native, edge computing, and AI, SUSE showcased successful collaborations with companies such as Edgenesis, Ali Cloud, and Advantech. These partnerships span a wide range of applications: from intelligent manufacturing, to renewable energy, to cross-domain cloud-native and AI applications. Together, SUSE and Edgenesis launched an unified AIoT platform, while Ali Cloud and SUSE co-developed a cloud-edge AI solution to help enterprise users maximize the potential of generative AI. Advantech leveraged its industrial automation expertise to work with SUSE on intelligent factories and new energy solutions built on the K3s platform.
As generative AI, cloud-native, and edge computing technologies converge, businesses are presented with unprecedented opportunities for digital transformation. SUSE and its partners are not only providing strong technical support, but also building blueprints to fuel global digital innovation. Ali Cloud, SinyNet, and oBoson Labs were each named "SUSE 2024 Outstanding Partner of the Year" for their exceptional contributions to business and cloud-native innovation.
Finally, Chan remarked that 2024 marks SUSE's 20th anniversary in China – an important milestone reflecting SUSE's long-term commitment to the Chinese market and a testament to its rapid growth as the nation enters an era of AI-assisted, accelerated transformation. In this time of global technology transformation, SUSE is at the forefront, leading enterprises into a digital future.
About SUSE
SUSE is a global leader in innovative, reliable, and secure open-source enterprise solutions, including SUSE Linux Enterprise, Rancher Prime, and NeuVector. Trusted by more than 60% of Fortune 500 companies, SUSE powers mission-critical workloads, enabling innovation everywhere – from the data center to the cloud, to the edge and beyond. SUSE puts the "open" back in open source, collaborating with partners and communities to give customers the agility to solve today's challenges and the freedom to evolve their strategies and solutions tomorrow. For more information, visit www.suse.com.
