SUSECON 2026 Wrap-Up: Choice Happened in Prague

What a week in Prague! This city has a way of making big ideas feel possible, and SUSECON 2026 met that energy from the very first keynote.

As I sit here catching my breath (and catching up on my sleep!), I’m buzzing from the one throughline that defined every conversation: Resilience. Months ago, when we created the theme “Shaping Your Resilient Future,” we knew it was relevant. But today, it feels almost omniscient. 

In just the last few months, we’ve seen a perfect storm of drivers: the urgent move toward digital sovereignty, the tightening of global cybersecurity mandates, the great virtualization migration, and the push to get AI out of the lab and into production – not to mention increased innovation at the furthest edge.

None of this can happen in a black box. That’s why the second major thread of the week was OPEN. Not just open source code, but open architecture, open standards, open processes, and absolute transparency in how AI actually works.

SUSECON 26 At a Glance

• Open is the Architecture of 2026: We proved that “openness” is now a business strategy, not just a licensing model.
• Real-World Resilience: Customers like Aussie Broadband, MTU Aero Engines, and FIS showed that open architecture is winning in the most regulated production environments on earth.
• Practical Sovereignty: The inaugural SUSE Sovereign Summit moved the needle from theoretical compliance to actual exit strategies and data residency.
• Agentic Reality: We didn’t just talk about AI; we showed how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) bridges the gap between AI agents and secure infrastructure and announced exciting new partnerships with global leaders like Nvidia to deliver SUSE AI Factory and other AI infrastructure solutions. 

What Open Means in 2026

For decades, open source was the engine under the hood. But today, “openness” has expanded. It shows up as an ecosystem, where no company has to go it alone. It shows up as open governance, making sovereignty and compliance clear rather than buried in legal fine print. And it shows up as open operations, where humans stay firmly in control even as AI automation accelerates.

Each of these dimensions is critical right now. AI is moving into core infrastructure, cost pressures are back in every boardroom, and sovereignty expectations are reshaping architecture well beyond Europe. When these forces converge, openness is what keeps you in the driver’s seat.

Open in Action

The best part? This isn’t a someday story. Our customers and partners are already running circles around the closed-system playbook.

During the keynotes, Peter Smails showcased how organizations are building for the future:

• FIS executed a massive migration from vSphere to SUSE Virtualization—and actually released two new open-source tools back to the community in the process.
• MTU Aero Engines cleared manual bottlenecks in a highly regulated environment by embracing IaC and SUSE Virtualization.
• ITQ  brought Q9, its robot dog powered by SUSE, to show how secure enterprise AI can move from concept to real-world use.

I also have to give a shout-out to Flavio Castelli, Divya Mohan, and Rossella Sblendido. Watching Rossella drive Model Context Protocol (MCP) through real Rancher workflows was a highlight for me. (And yes, the interface is accessible enough that even a CMO can follow it!) The engineering is brilliant, but the real magic is how it keeps human expertise at the center of fleet management and safe operations.

Culture, Sovereignty, and AWS

Openness is also a culture. On Monday, we hosted the first SUSE Sovereign Summit. We put senior leaders from private enterprise and the public sector in a press-free room to have the “hard” conversations. We compared notes on the EU AI Act, DORA, and the harsh realities of exit strategies. We created a space for candor across borders, because sovereignty is a global conversation now, and it requires radical honesty.

That honesty builds trust, and trust builds partnerships. Our 15-year relationship with AWS is the gold standard of this. Their Thursday keynote, featuring Werner Knoblich and Manu Parbhakar, capped a week of deep-dive sessions on everything from confidential workloads to retail-edge AI. You can also watch Manu and I chat about sovereignty and AI on TechStrong TV!

Why the Future is Open

Earlier this week, we celebrated our Customer and Partner Award winners—the “Architects of Resilience.” The energy in that room was infectious. Such amazing innovation and world change is being done by these organizations. It reminded me that openness really thrives when we do the work together, as a community.

The road to SUSECON 2027 starts now. We aren’t just building software; we’re building the choice and flexibility that the future requires.

Come build with us. Join the community, get involved in the projects, and let’s make Choice Happen together.

In the meantime, you can catch all the highlights and the high energy of Prague on our YouTube channel, , and check out this video for more highlights from today.

See you on the road!