SUSE Expands Computing Possibilities Beyond the Edge with SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1

NUREMBERG, Germany, Oct. 26, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SUSE®, a global leader in innovative, reliable and enterprise-grade open source solutions, today announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) Micro 5.1, a lightweight and secure operating system built for containerized and virtualized workloads. SLE Micro 5.1 adds edge-focused security features such as secure device onboarding and live patching, and it enables the modernizing of workloads with support for IBM Z and LinuxONE.

SLE Micro is built to scale, so customers can incorporate SLE Micro into their digital transformation plans – whether at the edge or supporting edge deployments with mainframes – in a way that allows them to transition workload designs from monolithic to microservices, at their own pace. They can start with container workloads or virtualizing their current legacy workloads, then move to containerized workloads when they are ready, with no change in the underlying system platform.

"SLE Micro is rapidly becoming a critical foundation of customers' digital transformation, as evidenced by a large U.S.-based systems integrator choosing SLE Micro to modernize their embedded systems with a seven-figure investment," said Thomas Di Giacomo, SUSE chief technology and product officer. "They want to support container workloads on an immutable infrastructure that is easy to maintain and update, enabling them to reduce maintenance costs and modernize their systems infrastructure. This win, within six months of SLE Micro's introduction, underscores the enterprise readiness of SLE Micro, which is the result of leveraging decades of enterprise-hardened technology components of the SUSE Linux Enterprise family."

SLE Micro is also helping to expand SUSE's reach into some of its key industry focus segments, such as telecommunications and manufacturing.

"One of the world's largest telecommunications companies views SLE Micro through the lens of openness because their current solution has morphed over several years into a locked-down stack," Di Giacomo said. "For them, closed-source software is not viable because it severely limits their ability to invest and innovate with not only software but also hardware. SLE Micro helped them unlock the cost-savings potential of open source design for both software and hardware. With SLE Micro's open standards design, they can explore commodity hardware from a number of vendors and build an open source-based software platform using open standards such as Kubernetes with open source tools of their choice. Ultimately, they expect significant savings on software and hardware, while keeping full control of their technology stack strategy and roadmap."

SLE Micro also makes it easy for organizations of all sizes to adopt Kubernetes because it is designed to work well with K3s, SUSE Rancher (RKE2) or third-party Kubernetes distributions.

Bhumik Patel, director of server ecosystem development, Infrastructure Line of Business, Arm, said, "Evidenced by the broad support for Arm initiatives such as Project Cassini, SOAFEE, and the most recently announced Project Centauri, it's clear the industry is embracing cloud-native software principles today in order to stay ahead of the ever-changing power and performance requirements of edge and IoT devices. With the combination of SLE Micro and K3s, SUSE is providing an excellent platform for Arm-based embedded devices, edge use cases and industrial IoT applications."

SLE Micro, teamed with other SUSE technologies, aims to be the foundation of container workloads deployed in all areas of production – edge environments, embedded, industrial IoT, and a variety of compute environments inside or outside the data center.

Important new customer benefits provided by SLE Micro 5.1 include:

• Decreased deployment time and fewer manual processes with improved onboarding security through secure device onboarding of appliances and devices. Using the integrated secure device onboarding client, managed service providers (MSP) or independent hardware and software vendors (IHV and ISV) can ship an appliance directly to the end customer and remotely onboard the device securely.
• Reduced costly downtime per device with live patching of the kernel, allowing security patches to be applied as soon as available without waiting for a maintenance window and without stopping the running kernel. At the edge, this mitigates the high security risk from thousands of devices that have an active security vulnerability.
• Capability for the gradual modernization of applications toward a microservice-based architecture. SLE Micro, with its small footprint, built-in security framework and near-zero administrative overhead, provides an excellent container and virtualization host for IBM Z and LinuxONE. Customers can run their workloads (containerized or virtualized) in an optimal way – with minimal storage, more security and less latency – on the same mainframe that stores the enterprise's mission-critical data.

Kara Todd, director of Linux, IBM Z and LinuxONE, IBM, said, "SUSE adding SLE Micro to its products supported on IBM Z and LinuxONE demonstrates a continued prioritization of choice. We expect our joint customers will appreciate being able to take advantage of this immutable Linux distribution as a KVM host in their secure execution stack, taking advantage of the security and reliability the IBM Z platform provides."

For more information about SUSE Linux Enterprise Micro 5.1 and edge computing solutions from SUSE, visit www.suse.com/products/micro and www.suse.com/solutions/edge-computing.

About SUSE
SUSE is a global leader in innovative, reliable and enterprise-grade open source solutions, relied upon by more than 60% of the Fortune 500 to power their mission-critical workloads. We specialize in Enterprise Linux, Kubernetes Management, and Edge solutions, and collaborate with partners and communities to empower our 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. The company employs nearly 2000 people globally and is listed in the regulated market (Prime Standard) of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. For more information, visit www.suse.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Any statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects for the company, including statements containing the words "aims," "targets," "will," "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "expects," and similar expressions, may constitute forward-looking statements and should be read with caution. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including competitive landscape, development of customer deals, reliance upon customer relationships, management of growth and acquisitions, the possibility of undetected software issues, the risks of impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic downturns, pricing pressures and the viability of the Internet. In addition, any forward-looking statements included herein represent views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. The Company does not have any obligation to update its forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to change and should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date other than the date of this press release.

Copyright 2021 SUSE LLC. All rights reserved. SUSE and the SUSE logo are registered trademarks of SUSE LLC in the United States and other countries. All third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Contact:
Kevan Barney
[email protected]

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/suse-expands-computing-possibilities-beyond-the-edge-with-suse-linux-enterprise-micro-5-1--301408107.html

SOURCE SUSE