If you’re an enterprise, which flavour of Linux to use?
The products
are all quite similar, says Mark Salter, global VP channel sales at
SUSE, and this being open source, any differentiator will only ‘last
five minutes’.
He says what’s different about SUSE is its close
relationship with fellow German company SAP, proved by the 95% of all
HANA implementations that are running on SUSE Linux.
Salter was in
South Africa for a partner event at the Micro Focus offices in
Johannesburg, and the small auditorium was full of people interested in
open source, and specifically SUSE.
SUSE is a brand within
Micro Focus, and has a completely separate management organisation.
Salter says Micro Focus looks for mature software which it invests in
and supports. Investment in SUSE is running ’50 or 60% ahead of our
growth’, which enabled it to make acquisitions.
“This means our customers are getting better
software to work with all the time and our growth will catch up with
that as time progresses.”
Micro Focus is also finalising the purchase of the software business of HPE, agreeing to pay $2.5 billion as part of the sale.
This
will be complete in September, and will make Micro Focus the second
largest software vendor in Europe - behind SAP - and about the eighth in
the world, Salter tells the Margin.
Another differentiator with
SUSE, according to Salter, is its ‘customer-centric’ partner programme,
which is purely based on the partner’s skills, and not by how much they sell.
SUSE certifies
individuals and accredits partner organisations in any of its four
product lines: Linux server, server manager, open stack cloud, and
software-defined enterprise storage.
This week also sees the
announcement of a fifth product: container-as-a-service, which will be
officially launched at the company’s convention in September.
When a
company receives a SUSE certification, it will receive 30 free technical
support calls every year, and will be included in SUSE’s global network
of partners. The company will also receive a 10% rebate on any deal it
wins, in addition to any margin it was making.
The only other ‘step
up’ in the programme is what it terms a ‘solution partner’, who is
expected to have higher level skills, and more employees. These partners
get a 30% rebate, and 60 free calls to technical support.
SUSE has about 500 partner organisations worldwide.
SUSE
also doesn’t do renewals itself, and while it has a renewals sales
team, its job is to make sure the renewals happen through the partner.
Marketing activities are also planned with partners.
“Whenever a
customer wants to talk to a vendor, we take that customer to a partner
with that skill, for instance, a product in a particular geography. Then
we’ll handhold the partner and customer to make sure it’s good
marriage, and let them work together.”
Ahead of the curve
Salter says there’s been particular interest in software-defined storage in South Africa.
“You
seem to be ahead of the curve in the number of people - and the
interest - in using this sort of technology, because it saves money.
We’re finding in developing economies, the whole business of open
source, the ability to reuse and repurpose existing environments, has
significant resonance.”
India, too, had seen massive growth in the use of SUSE products.
“The
number of people India is training in technology is phenomenal. They’re
taking over the world, and they embrace open source,” says Salter.
“The message of an Indian system integrator (SI) is ‘we can do the same job as your traditional SI, for a lot lower cost’."
By its nature, open source is effective in lower-cost environments, and cloud helps it to be even lower cost, he says.
“South
Africa is faster at investing and utilising technology than people ever
realise. Fifteen years ago I was here with Sun Microsystems, and we did
a deal with Telkom and Absa to enable instant trading settlements over
the web. We were doing three-day settlements in Europe, and you go from
one day to instant using the clearing system, and the telecommunication
company and ADSL lines, in those days. You just didn’t call it the cloud,
but that was a cloud-based environment.”
Salter says that partners
had to embrace cloud, and they were undergoing a transformation ‘from
being a solutions partner to a services partner that delivers a
solution’. Smaller players would need to partner with a major cloud
provider, and deliver a complete solution over the web.
“The whole world is going to the cloud. The SME is going invest in cloud much faster than the corporates.”
“The
integrity of the channel is fundamental to us, and partners make money
out of the cloud. If you don’t do that, you’re going to find your
company having less and less relevance in the marketplace.”
Salter says anyone is welcome to be a SUSE partner, for no cost.
“Once
one person is certified technically, and one person on the sales side, you get
the accredited partner benefits. And there’s no limit to that. We all
have limited resources, so we’ll invest in those people that we believe
have a growth opportunity with us, and where their ethos, philosophy and
focus meet ours.”
Specifically, SUSE saw markets of growth around governments, as well as SAP, cloud and disaster recovery.
“The more a partner invests in us, the more we’ll help you in your business.”
And what’s with the Gecko?
“We adapt, you succeed,” he says.
“We can change our colour, but we’re always green.”