Novacoast & The ATS Group Claim Top Spot in SUSE’s Partner Ecosystem

Both Companies Become SUSE’s First Solution Partners in North America

The chameleon is synonymous with SUSE – it is part of our logo and brand identity, and you can’t wander past a SUSE booth at an event without bumping into a plush version.

In the wild, chameleons flourish when their habitat is a part of a rich and diverse ecosystem. That analogy also holds true for the SUSE business in North America, where our business flourishes because of the relationships that we have with leading hardware and software vendors, cloud service providers, managed service partners and strategic integrators throughout our partner ecosystem.

The collaborative environment in which we work with our partner ecosystem produces the alchemy that enables customers who choose SUSE to reap the benefits of open source technologies, hardened for enterprise IT environments.

Two of our partners who have demonstrated their commitment to supporting enterprise businesses in building out open source solutions based on SUSE are Novacoast and The ATS Group. Two very different companies with something in common – they are the first Solution Partners to be announced for SUSE in North America.

“Enterprise businesses who want to take advantage of the agility and effectiveness of open source solutions can do no better than rely on Novacoast and The ATS Group,” says Mike Kerr, Director – NA Channels & Alliances. “Both of these companies have demonstrated supreme technical capability and years of experience solving the most difficult IT challenges for enterprise businesses. Welcome Novacoast and The ATS Group as the first North American partners to join the elite group of SUSE Solution Partners worldwide!”

Novacoast

The Novacoast team accepting their SUSE Solution Partner certificate

Novacoast has built a reputation for solving technical challenges others would run from. The team at Novacoast pride themselves on being more than security specialists, software developers or network engineers. For their customers, they are guides, allies, and problem solvers.

As a SUSE partner since 2004, the partnership between both companies has matured and grown closer over time. SUSE has consistently relied on Novacoast to deliver the toughest integrations for our customers.

Novacoast’s expertise on emergent technologies has helped shape the development of SUSE’s software-defined solutions, like SUSE Enterprise Storage and SUSE Containers-as-a-Service Platform – demonstrating that our partnership goes beyond just business.

“We’re a shop that doesn’t enter into partnerships lightly. Our work with SUSE is driven by our belief in, and intimate understanding of, open-source methodology, and our decades of experience in enterprise IT”, says Paul Anderson, CEO of Novacoast. “For the countless engagements where open-source solutions work best, we find SUSE to consistently be the best option for the security and scalability demands of big business. From AppArmor to SUSE Manager, we basically keep using SUSE because they do exactly what customers need them to”.

With the history that SUSE has with Novacoast, we wanted to find out what they thought of the new SUSE Partner Program which launched in September 2016.

“Their Partner Program painlessly handles certifications, deal registrations and tracking, making it easy for us to do our work of regularly bringing about the impossible, with no small amount of style!” Paul also notes, “We’ve worked with plenty of technical partners and this is rare—a model that simply rewards the best work with the most opportunity, helping groups like us, and helping customers get the best technical talent for their unique requirements”.

The ATS Group

The ATS Group with their SUSE Solution Partner certificate

The ATS Group is a professional services company with a strong focus on delivering solutions versus individual products.  Their customers trust them to solve their complex IT problems, not just sell them a piece of hardware or software.

Founded in 2001, The ATS Group have consulted on thousands of system implementations, upgrades, backups and recoveries. Their team of over 60 industry-certified professionals support customers from SMBs, Fortune 500 companies, and government agencies with managed services, performance analysis and capacity planning. As experts in IBM, VMware, Oracle, SUSE and other leading vendors, The ATS Group are experienced in virtualization, storage area networks (SANs), high availability, performance tuning, software-defined storage, enterprise backup and other evolving technologies that operate mission-critical systems on premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment.

“We choose to partner with SUSE because we trust a solution backed by SUSE to be reliable, scalable, and cost effective. Relationships are everything in our business and we can rest assured ours is in good hands when recommending a SUSE product”, says Tim Conley, Principal at The ATS Group. “An example of this SUSE’s OpenStack offering. Those that have tried to roll their own OpenStack Private Cloud will tell you that it’s not an easy task. SUSE has streamlined the process saving us both time and money. All this translates into a better overall experience for our customers”.

The ATS Group is also an active supporter of the Philadelphia Linux Users Group (PLUG), one of the most active Linux User Groups in the U.S., hosting events at their facilities in Malvern, PA.  Tim explains, “We see our partnership with SUSE as a way to bring a bigger voice to this great community that’s already supporting users from all major industries. It also gives users the opportunity to build a more personal relationship with both their business partner and software vendor”.

The team at The ATS Group achieved a formidable feat – acquiring their technical certifications in SUSE Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Storage and SUSE OpenStack Cloud in just a matter of months.

“Our engineers and architects have deep technical expertise, and they recognize the value these certifications can bring to themselves and also to our company,” notes Tim. “Our team earned their certifications by utilizing the free online training through the SUSE Partner Portal, attending classes at SUSECon 2016, doing hands-on build-outs in our lab, and even the occasional cluster build over a few beers!”