SUSE Appoints Its First Managing Director for Southeast Asia

December 15, 2020


Singapore

SUSE®, a global leader in true open source solutions, today announced the appointment of Isabella Kusumawati as its vice president and managing director for Southeast Asia. The leadership appointment follows SUSE’s successful fourth quarter results which saw continued global growth, as well as the closing of the acquisition of Rancher Labs.

As the new managing director for Southeast Asia, Kusumawati is aiming to significantly increase revenue in the region in the next three years, in large part by recruiting partners and top talent to draw on untapped markets and opportunities in the region.

According to the Harvard Business Review’s “The Platform Revolution in Southeast Asia,” Southeast Asia is one of the fastest-growing e-commerce markets in the world. But Asia Pacific enterprises, large retailers, and brands are lagging in their platform strategies, putting them at a competitive risk. At the same time, Nielsen’s “What’s Next in Southeast Asia” report calls Southeast Asia the next growth frontier. It is an emerging market that accounts for 2.6% of global land area but is home to 8.3% of the world’s population. The fast-growing population with stable GDP growth and high digital connectivity increases the desire for more innovation in the region.

“Our customers are looking for choice; they demand open technologies that help them drive their business outcomes,” Kusumawati said. “We are currently hiring aggressively as we look to expand the team to help our customers, communities and partners leverage open source solutions. In today’s business environment, digital transformation is imperative and open source is playing a major role that delivers a robust foundation in the modern IT landscape, as well as cost efficiencies and innovation. The trend of enterprises leveraging open source technology will rise drastically like never before as it allows companies to develop an ecosystem that can advance faster innovation, enabling unprecedented scale, adaptability and additional new features supporting changing trends and customer demands.”

Phillip Miltiades, president of SUSE Asia Pacific & Japan, said, “Isabella brings to SUSE a wealth of experience in building highly competitive sales organizations. She is adept at uncovering untapped opportunities and supporting customer business outcomes through technology solutions. With the digital economy in Southeast Asia growing at a rapid pace, I am confident under Isabella’s leadership that she will be successful in building the market and growing SUSE’s business.”

Kusumawati is a senior sales leader with 17 years of success in sales management, including new market and business development for top tech companies such as Salesforce, SAP, Oracle and Microsoft. She is an active member in Business Women Network, and she is also the local ambassador for SUSE’s Women in Technology (WIT) for Asia Pacific Japan and Greater China.

About SUSE

SUSE is a global leader in true open source innovation, collaborating with partners, communities and customers to deliver and support robust open source software solutions. SUSE’s market-leading Linux, Kubernetes, container and cloud offerings enable customers to innovate everywhere – from the data center, to the cloud, to the edge and beyond. SUSE puts the “open” back in open source, giving customers the agility to tackle innovation challenges today and the freedom to evolve their strategy and solutions tomorrow.

Forward-Looking Statements

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