As organizations accelerate their digital transformation initiatives, they are increasingly embracing the power, affordability and versatility of open source software.
Now, the combination of two leading open source providers will open even more possibilities for organizations. SUSE, the leader in enterprise Linux, is acquiring Rancher, the leader in Kubernetes container management, together delivering a revolutionary approach to open source that gives customers the freedom to innovate everywhere.
Here’s a look at how five prominent organizations—Amazon Web Services, Dell Technologies, T-Systems, Fujitsu and ZAMG—have been leveraging open source technologies and how the SUSE and Rancher combination will enable even more possibilities.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is providing a robust platform for running applications on SUSE that has dynamically scalable compute power, analytics services, messaging capabilities, on-demand storage and development tools. "Open source is important to our customers and we strive to make our customers’ favorite open source projects and solutions run best on AWS," says Peder Ulander, head of enterprise and developer marketing at AWS.
The coming together of SUSE and Rancher greatly expands what customers will be able to access via the AWS Cloud and enables the deployment of containers to rapidly transition between on-premise and cloud environments. "This will enable SUSE customers to be more agile since they'll be able to use the same application development platform to build on premises or in the cloud," says Ulander.
To better serve citizens, government agencies are accelerating their digital transformation efforts by turning to open source and companies like Dell Technologies to help modernize their existing infrastructures.
Key to these transformations is the deployment of Kubernetes-managed containers, now offered by SUSE and Rancher, which allow agencies to break down legacy, monolithic applications and enable mission-critical applications to run across a variety of end-user devices from smartphones to tablets and other endpoints.
For T-Systems, the IT services and consulting subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, a comprehensive open source software stack, including the combination of an operating system of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP and Rancher’s lightweight Kubernetes distribution K3s, have been key to improving their customer experience and supporting a growing roster of high-capacity enterprise and edge computing offerings.
As traditional manufacturing becomes more automated and reshapes the world in which we live in, T-Systems is supporting the expected rise in smart factories and production systems that exchange real-time information by leveraging Kubernetes within its edge computing platform, EdgAIR.
This integration is enabling T-Systems' customers to run applications and process performance data directly on factory hardware, which dramatically reduces latency and operational costs while improving productivity.
One major European industrial robotics company, for example, is employing T-Systems and Rancher to run software close to its robots to enable remote support, predictive maintenance and data caching.
Open source doesn't just make the jobs of technology professionals easier, it also makes information and computing resources more accessible to the stakeholders who need them most, paving the way to the democratization of technology and accelerating cloud adoption.
Jason Daniels, CTO for law and order at Fujitsu UK, believes this democratization of technology will ultimately lead to a "human-centric government" where everyone, not just developers, can participate and make use of information resources.
"Rancher democratizes the Kubernetes layer, which is seen as super complex and difficult to deploy or consume in multiple locations," says Daniels. "It provides a really simple, common interface that developers can use to build applications, but at the same time, allowing business users access to real-time information. It's a multi-persona platform that meets the needs of different parts of the organization."
The SUSE and Rancher combination will take this a step further, providing a rich and scalable backend on which developers can design and deploy applications.
ZAMG (Zentralanstalt fur Meteorologie und Geodynamik), the world's oldest public weather service, has been leveraging open source solutions such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for HPC to crunch weather data, predict weather events and make decisions before destruction occurs.
With SUSE’s acquisition of Rancher, ZAMG will be able to take this capability to new heights, analyzing 100,000 data sets per minute and deploying containerized applications to access and share data that can ultimately save lives.
"Through the combined SUSE-Rancher stack, we will be able to connect various systems and utilities into an intelligent network that can automatically respond, in real time, to events," says Günther Tschabuschnig, CIO of ZAMG. "For example, if there is an earthquake in the southern part of Austria, we will be able to transport this information in a matter of seconds to a system that will stop a train in the earthquake's path."
Achieving a feat like that requires combining, delivering and sharing data with all relevant parties. With SUSE and Rancher, ZAMG will be able to safely aggregate and analyze various data sets at lightning speed.
