The Open Infrastructure Mandate: Navigating Virtualization and AI with SUSE and CSCS

Hey everyone, it's Alan Shimel. We're back here at SUSECON. Actually day one, though it feels like day two because we were here yesterday for day zero.

But today was the official start. These two folks just came in off of the stage, and we're really happy to have them. Let me introduce you to them.

On my far right, he's been with us before. You might have seen him at last year's SUSECON, Imran Khan. Imran, welcome.

Thank you. It's good to see you again. And to my close right here is Maria, I want to make sure we get this right, Maria Grazia.

And Maria is with the CSCS Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. Thank you. Which is a phenomenal group we're going to hear more about in a minute.

Imran, though, let me start with you. Your title is Chief Customer Officer, right? And that can cover up a lot of different sins and so forth.

Give people an idea really what does Chief Customer Officer mean at SUSE? Yeah, I'm still trying to work that out. But no, the Chief Customer Officer, my responsibilities at SUSE is looking after all of our support business.

So we support our customers, all of our services, all the customer experience, all of our training. So really kind of anything to do with touching the customer and making sure that they're getting value out of our SUSE products is my responsibility. I love it.

And that's a big task, right? Because the A to Z of customer support and service and happy customers, which is the name, it's never ending, right? Absolutely.

It's never ending. Maria, you're here as the customer. Okay.

But when you're not the customer, you actually have quite a role over at the Swiss Supercomputing Centre. Why don't you share with our audience? Yes.

As Imran said, okay, besides the titles or this job description are what they are, yeah, at the moment, I am an Associate Director at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre, but I am also responsible for the customers of CSCS. Also. For the users specifically, the researchers- Okay ...

and scientists of CSCS, because I am responsible for what we call the user lab, so the user laboratory, where we give resources to the scientists that wants to use our infrastructure. And then I'm also responsible coordinating the strategic roadmaps of CSCS. We also have to have roadmaps, where we want to go, how far, how we want to go, and the timelines.

And so these are my major responsibilities at the moment at CSCS. I love it. And as I mentioned, the both of you just came off the main keynote stage here.

You were talking about modernizing with virtualization. As luck would have it, I actually just finished interviewing one of the gentlemen from Dell on same topic, right? Because we could talk about AI, and we could talk about sovereignty, and some of the big themes of this year's SUSECON, but where rubber meets the road, we still have a lot of companies, a lot of organizations that are confronted with, "Should I stay with what I'm doing with-" Yeah ...

with VMware? Look, the pricing, it's no secret. We're not disclosing it.

The pricing has gone up drastically. Maybe this is a good time to evaluate my options. What are my options?

I don't want to disrupt my business, but at the same time, it's not just about pricing. I want to be ready for this next wave. I want to be ready for AI.

I want to be ready for cloud native. I want to be ready for what comes next. We have customers to serve, too.

And I imagine this is what the both of you, right, are talking about. Maria, I assume you're here with SUSE. You've been working with them on this very issue.

Yes. We have been working about these very issues because, well, we do understand that when you go in transformation, modernization, or whatever we want to call them, you bring a lot of disruption. You bring disruption to your own staff.

But ultimately, what we all have to ask ourselves is the gain at the long term. So we have advocate for very, very long open source, in all aspect. I was mentioning also in the panel, not only at the level of CSCS, but also with our users.

We encourage users not to go for license code, but really use open codes and develop open codes. And this is important because first of all, it's true, you bring disruption, but you learn a lot. You find out-of-the-box solution that you wouldn't have even thought about otherwise.

So of course, you need to find a balance. Right. Because you also have- Because it has to work, right ...

to be there also for a purpose. You are not just there for playing. But I think that so far, I must say that CSCS experience has been very positive.

Excellent. Imran, you heard what Maria said here, and look, this goes right to one of the core SUSE strengths, which is open infrastructure, let's call it openness, right? And that's always been before there was an AI and after, well, I don't know if we'll have after AI.

But open is kind of in your DNA at SUSE. How did thatYou know, knowing what the Swiss supercomputing mission was, what their desires was, happy customers, how did that come together for you with SUSE? Yeah.

So, Maria summarized it well. When you've got the legacy systems, you've got these monolithic apps, how do we actually build that comfort for the customer in trying to drive that disruption that Maria just mentioned? So at SUSE, we're really kind of focused on making sure that we can actually, whether it be driving assessment services to kind of see what you've got, which is kind of a postmortem of your environment.

And then also, one of the things that you mentioned earlier was, this thing about lock-ins. Right. A lot of people want choice, and we were able to kind of come to the table and say: Look, we're going to give you choice, but we're going to do it in a way that's seamless to your environment.

And we'll go at speed, or we can do it at the pace of your environment, because change drives ambiguity- Sure ... ambiguity drives concern, just normal human behavior. So those are the things that we've been able to do at SUSE by demonstrating that as well as working on some of those offerings.

Absolutely. And I want to just emphasize, and Maria, you can chime in here, it's not about just cost. It really is about freedom or freedom from lock-in, let's call it, minimizing disruptions, options.

And that is something that every organization that's looking at this sort of path, it has to take into account. Another thing they have to take into account, though, in 2026 and beyond is AI. I mentioned it earlier.

It's disruptive. It's in a good way for the most part, but it could be in a bad way, too, in a little. It's disrupting.

How is that, Imran, you speak to many customers like Maria, how is the whole AI kind of shadow affecting virtualization plans this year and beyond? That's a very good question, Alan. I think that, and it was kind of mentioned in one of our keynotes this morning, it's so difficult to keep up with AI.

Even the AI folks are struggling keeping up with AI because it's moving at such high speed. But this is where we kind of play a part in it, back to helping you modernize to build that platform to allow you to make that springboard to get to the next version of whatever it may be. Because we don't know what we don't know, which is quite a lot at the moment.

Yeah. And that's, I think, unfolding. Yeah, but I think we also have to be a little critical with this AI.

Seems like AI is taking over. I don't fully agree with that, because at CSES, we are making an effort to actually understand this AI. So we are, I mentioned, we are training model, but with the purpose of really understanding what these models are doing, why they are working, why they are failing.

So for us, for me, we are still at a stage where we really need to understand the full potential of this AI. Also understand the risks. There are a lot of risks.

There are a lot of garbage also coming out of this. So of course, it's revolutionary. Of course, it's something we need to look at, we need to take into account, but I would be cautious in thinking that we will solve all our problems thanks to AI.

If you figure it out, please let me know, okay? And I'm not against... I use it a lot.

Yeah, sure. We all do, I think. It's an amazing tool.

Yes. Don't take me wrong. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm not saying that- But it's not a panacea. Yeah. I think there's going to be a lot of learning.

Well, this is a long discussion. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of learning.

Imran, I want to come back to you, though. You guys have done enough of these transformations now where you must see signals or signposts that says things are going good. Oh, boy, we better maybe dig in here.

I see a rough spot. Give us some of the telltales, if you will. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. Success markers.

Yes. Success-wise is making sure that we do what we say we're going to do. That's my success factor.

But one of the things that we're really good at, and that we've introduced, and actually, there's a booth behind me to show that, is the voice of the customer. We really kind of stay very close to our customer to understand the journey that they're taking and if there are any pitfalls. And what we try to do is kind of solicit a lot of the telemetry out there to say, "Look, be careful.

" And then we modify and course correct. And the one thing I will say, and I'm really proud of this at SUSE, even though we've got some tenure as a company, we are very nimble in our approach. So it's all about speed for us and actually making sure that we can turn around, change something, and making sure that the customer doesn't get impacted.

Because it's like what you said earlier, Alan, you talked about cost. Is it just cost? Is it just lock-in?

No. It's all about making sure that we're providing a very high-quality service afterwards, right? And a solution at that.

Exactly, Maria. So I want to make sure that we do that. And every day is a school day in our world, especially my world.

So we're constantly learning just the same way AI does. I agree with you. Well, with AI, it's crazy.

And Maria, as a customer, but as you said, you have your own customers. Yeah. And so everything he's saying goes double for you.

Yes, because maybe our customers are scientists are not the easiest. No. Doctors are worse, but- And the problem is- ...

scientists are right there ... that very often scientists do not like disruption. Yeah.

Because scientists are coming with their own software stack that they have been using for the last 20 years successfully. And so when you tell them, "Well, but now it's the time for you to adapt to modern time," the reaction is not always the easiest. But they are also...

You don't have to fight with them. You have to help them and accompany them to reach the point you want, and to make sure that they can still be your users- Absolutely ... for the coming years.

Happy users. So you have to really work with them and make sure that they understand also the advantage of changing the things that... We know you were successful.

There's no discussion there. Doesn't mean that you don't have to change things and adapt to modern times. Agreed.

So, you brought up something about scientists. I made a joke about doctors, but here's the truth. Most customers, and I'm not...

Most people are procrastinators. No one likes to make a decision until they have to. We've got too many other things that I got to do today to worry about something.

And then all of a sudden, oh my God, I got to decide what I'm doing with VMware. I got 90 days. Yeah.

Thank God I set myself a reminder. I've got 90 days to either pay the vig, find a new solution, or do something. I'm sure there are people out here coming up on their 90-day window.

What would be your advice to them? Look around. Quickly.

Choice matters. Yes. And I think having a vendor that will actually...

It doesn't have to necessarily be a lift and shift, but a migration to that end state to get to a lift and shift. But make sure that you choose the vendor that's going to give you the same quality of service, since it has to always be on. So, I think once that's kind of established, I think it's okay.

And it's back to what I said earlier. It's not all about cost, it's not all about those other things. It's about making sure that you get the right quality of service.

So, I think they need to look hard, and obviously I'm going to point them in SUSE's direction. Excellent. What would be your advice, Maria?

My advice would be open-minded. Science is about discovering new things, so advance the human knowledge. So for me, it's absolutely important that scientists are open-minded.

They are willing to work with us. I'm not saying that they have to do the effort on their own, but there are solutions out there. The world is evolving, so you need to evolve with the world.

If you remain skeptical and you remain a procrastinator, in the end you will lose. But not because you are not smart, but because the world has moved on- Right ... and left you behind.

It doesn't wait for anyone. It doesn't wait for anybody. You're right.

We're about out of time. Imran, first of all, it's a pleasure seeing you. I hope it's not another year- No ...

till I see you. Come on Techstrong TV once in a while. Maria, pleasure meeting you.

Thank you very much for inviting me. Thank you for all the work that you guys do, though. Thank you.

I'm a science geek myself, and so I often find myself, I see it in a headline, or I come across the work that you guys do, and thank you for everything. Thank you. Tough budget cycles.

Yeah. We don't put as much money into basic research that we need to, and I appreciate what you do. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Alan. Thank you. Thank you, Maria.

Hey, we're here at SUSECON. We've got a lot more coming your way. Stay tuned.

We're going to take a break. We'll be back.