Introducing the AI-Native Platform Engineering Stack: WSO2 and SUSE Unite to Close the Developer Experience Gap on Kubernetes

A complete, open-source developer platform meets enterprise Kubernetes, delivering golden paths, AI-native operations, and production-grade governance from Day 1.

Co-authored by Kristian Gyorkos, SVP Channels and Alliances, WSO2 and Steve Hale, Sr. Director, Global Software and Services Partners, SUSE

Kubernetes won. That debate is over. But for most enterprises, winning the infrastructure battle has simply revealed a new one: the developer experience gap.

Teams have clusters, pipelines, and policies; yet, developers still spend too much time wiring tools together and too little time shipping products. Platform engineering has emerged as the discipline to fix this, but the industry’s answer so far has largely stopped at developer portals. A portal is a front door. It is not a house.

At SUSECON 2026 in Prague, WSO2 and SUSE introduced the AI-Native Platform Engineering Stack, a jointly architected solution that combines SUSE Rancher Prime with the WSO2 Developer Platform for OpenChoreo to deliver a complete, production-ready internal developer platform on Kubernetes.

Why Portals Alone Are Not Enough

The CNCF’s Platform Engineering Maturity Model describes a clear progression: from ad-hoc scripts (Stage 0) to stitched tooling (Stage 1), to portal-based approaches (Stage 2), and finally to a fully integrated platform-as-a-product (Stage 3). Most organizations today sit at Stage 1 or 2—they have adopted Backstage or a similar developer portal, yet their developers still jump between disconnected tools for CI/CD, observability, security, and deployments.

The AI-Native Platform Engineering Stack is designed to take enterprises directly to Stage 3. It doesn’t treat the portal as the center of gravity. Instead, it wraps a Backstage-powered developer portal inside a broader platform that includes built-in CI/CD and GitOps, full-stack observability, networking and traffic governance, policy enforcement and zero-trust security, and native AI agent integration—all unified under a single operational model.

What the Stack Looks Like

The architecture separates concerns into three layers that map to how modern enterprises actually operate:

Foundation — SUSE Rancher Prime. Enterprise Kubernetes management across cloud, on-premises, and edge. Rancher Prime provides fleet lifecycle management, hardened security with SUSE Security (NeuVector), topology-aware observability with SUSE Observability, and a vendor-neutral infrastructure layer that keeps enterprises free from lock-in.

Experience — WSO2 Developer Platform for OpenChoreo. More than a portal, this is the full platform. OpenChoreo, recently accepted as a CNCF Sandbox Project and now generally available as version 1.0, delivers programmable development abstractions and golden paths, a Backstage-powered developer portal and service catalog, integrated CI/CD workflows and native GitOps, comprehensive observability across logs, metrics, and traces, and cell-based architecture for zero-trust security enforcement. Kubernetes remains the system of record. Platform engineers define golden paths without hiding infrastructure from operators.

Intelligence — AI-Native by Design. The stack is built for the agentic era. Built-in MCP servers expose real-time platform and observability context to AI agents. Purpose-built agents for SRE, FinOps, and architecture operate natively on the platform, while the WSO2 AI Gateway and Agent Manager govern every AI-driven action—ensuring enterprises can adopt AI operations without losing control.

Shaping a Resilient Future, Together

The theme of SUSECON 2026 is Shaping Your Resilient Future—a call to build systems and operating models that hold up as technologies, regulations, and business priorities evolve. The AI-Native Platform Engineering Stack is a direct answer to that challenge.

Resilience in platform engineering means developers can self-serve without creating sprawl. It means security and governance are baked into golden paths, not bolted on after the fact. It means AI capabilities can be adopted incrementally and governed centrally. And it means the entire stack runs on open-source foundations—no proprietary lock-in, no single-vendor dependency.

By combining SUSE’s strength in enterprise Kubernetes infrastructure and security with WSO2’s expertise in developer platforms, API management, and AI governance, this joint solution gives platform engineering teams a paved path from Day 1—for both human developers and AI agents.

Who This Is For

The AI-Native Platform Engineering Stack is built for organizations that have standardized on Kubernetes but are still assembling their developer platform from disconnected tools. It speaks directly to Heads of Platform Engineering and DevOps who need to deliver self-service developer experiences without sacrificing governance, SRE and security teams looking for full-stack observability and policy enforcement that doesn’t slow down delivery, and enterprise architects evaluating how to introduce AI agents into production operations safely and at scale.

Get Started

The AI-Native Platform Engineering Stack is available now. Deploy OpenChoreo on SUSE Rancher Prime and experience the full platform engineering stack for yourself.

Get deployment instructions and start building →

If you’re at SUSECON 2026 in Prague, visit the WSO2 booth to see the stack in action and talk with the engineering teams from both companies who brought it to life.

About WSO2

WSO2 is a leading open-source technology provider of API management, integration, and identity and access management solutions. The WSO2 Developer Platform for OpenChoreo is the company’s AI-native internal developer platform for Kubernetes. Learn more at wso2.com.

About SUSE

SUSE is a global leader in open-source solutions for the enterprise. With SUSE Rancher Prime, SUSE Security, SUSE AI, and SUSE Linux Enterprise, SUSE empowers organizations to innovate, adapt, and succeed in today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape. Learn more at suse.com.