2021 Closing Thoughts in SUSE/AWS Land

2021 is drawing to a close, seems like it just flew by!

I know, so much has happened, and I don’t mean all the craziness in the news + our pandemic blues. I was actually, specifically thinking about AWS land. In December, we have just reached our 11^th year working together with AWS, delivering solutions in the cloud. And what a year it has been!

1. Going Next Level with Co-Innovation

2021 was a big, big year as far as co-innovation goes. Our two outstanding technical teams worked closely together to deliver some amazing achievements in these last 12 months.

AWS Service Ready Programs – AWS Service Ready Program is designed to validate software products built by AWS Partners that work with specific AWS services. These software products are technically validated by AWS Partner Solution Architects for their sound architecture and adherence to AWS best practices, and market adoption including customer successes. So what are the shiny new Service Ready “Badges” we won this year?

• AWS Graviton Service Ready – SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is fully certified for Graviton, blazing fast custom built 64-bit Arm processors that helps to optimize price performance for a variety of cloud workloads running in Amazon EC2.
• AWS Outposts – SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications have demonstrated successful integration with AWS Outposts deployments. AWS Outposts is a fully managed service that extends AWS infrastructure, AWS services, APIs, and tools to virtually any datacenter, co-location space, or on-premises facility.

• AWS ECS- Anywhere – SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is fully certified for ECS-Anywhere, so customers can run containers anywhere, both on AWS and outside AWS and maximize their CapEx investments

Other Major Integration Work:

• Control Tower – SUSE’s Control Tower integration eases the deployment of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications across AWS accounts . The integrated solution automates the creation of grants for accounts with in selected Organizational Units (OUs) – also, it leverages AWS Control Tower lifecycle events to automatically create the grants when a new AWS Account is created in those OUs using Account Factory.
• Inspector integration – SUSE now uses AWS Inspector to scan for security vulnerabilities in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server powered workloads
• SUSE Manager fully supports Amazon Linux – hear more about this in an upcoming webinar!
• TrilioVault Solution Stack – an amazing new solution stack from SUSE. AWS and Trilio – never worry about RansomeWare attack again, more details in a new webinar, coming in January!

In addition, the solution architects on our team (shout out to Stephen and Kevin!) did a ton of work, creating white papers, new demos, enablement sessions, workshops, webinars and so much more! All to support our customers and our vibrant and growing partner ecosystem!

2. Marketing Engine on Full Blast

In addition to technical marketing, what has the “marketing” marketing team been up to in these 12 months? Kicking butt and taking names with a whole bunch of fun marketing activities, that’s what!

Let’s just list a few:

• Webinars Galore! – I know, I know, you are suffering from webinar fatigue, I guess we are, a little bit too. Big and small, global and local, we delivered almost 2 dozen webinars in 2021, everything is archived and available to watch on-demand!
• Say “hello” to virtual events! – Adding a new dimension to our online marketing mix, we did a bunch of virtual events this year that really amps up the fun factor! Everything from Guinness Party for St. Paddys, to Summer BBQ, to Chocolate Tasting for Oktoberfest – we tried it all! All of these fun events are recorded and available for your viewing pleasure on SUSE’s YouTube channel.
• Did you check out our YouTube Playlist? – Speaking of YouTube, we created a brand new AWS specific playlist and here it is! Bookmark it for informative videos that are also fun and refreshing!
• Collateral Up the Wazoo! – We know that when you research a vendor and a new project, you’ll want to look at different things, whitepapers, infographics, videos and of course, customer case studies, so we delivered a number of these in various flavors, some even in local languages. (Hello Korea!)
• Who could forget – reInvent! reinvent just wrapped up, and what an amazing event! SUSE was a gold sponsor for the first time this year, and we had a great booth, right across from SAP! Our racing game at the booth drew a huge crowded all week, with rave reviews from winners and participants! And the energy level for the event was incredible! You sorta have to be there to know what I’m really talking about. I’ll do my best to describe – the overall energy level for the show was Off-The-Charts! People were so happy to be out and about again (we really do want Covid to just say bye bye already!), there were so many smiles, people’s eyes were lit up! Hugs even! You couldn’t find a more attentive audience. There is a great willingness, on everyone’s part, to socialize, to learn, to do business! Kudos to AWS for holding this wonderful event for us – can’t think of a better way to cap off the year. And a shout out to everyone who stopped by our booth this year. We definitely hope to see you again in 2022!

3. Revenue

I was told we are not allowed to be too specific about this one. Suffice it to say, it was a great, great year for our revenue growth! Thanks so much to the entire team, especially highest growth regions like EMEA and APJ! The increased customer count and the revenue growth percentage indicates that our customers know – as we do – that the #1 cloud platform and the #1 OS for SAP really does make for an amazing team! So thanks to all of our customers too, this would not have been the outstanding year that it was, without you guys!

4. Other Noteworthy Developments

These 2 things do not fit neatly in the categories above, so they warrant their own section, last certainly does NOT mean least in this regard!

Launching Professional Services on AWS Market Place: This is our first new product/solution listing in quite a few years, so it certainly is a major milestone! More importantly, customers have been asking for an easier way to procure SUSE services – consulting, training, premium support etc – on the market place, so we made their wish come true in April of this year!

SUSE, AWS, ARM are new board member of the Software Defined Vehicle Initiative:  Through our earlier launch with Elektrobit, SUSE proudly announced to the world – hey, we have something special to say in the automotive space! Joining forces with AWS, ARM and other key companies on the governing board of the Software Defined Vehicle Initiative is the next chapter of that story. And this is just the beginning, we have a lot of ambitious plans for the automotive space, as well as the broad Edge Ecosystem. So definitely watch this space!

That was a lightning round recap, it’s time to raise the glass and toast to an even better 2022! See you on the other side!