VANCOUVER - SUSE, the well-known Linux company, may not have the OpenStack cloud reputation of rivals Canonical, Red Hat, and Mirantis, but it offers one thing that no one else does: It's public-cloud agnostic.

In an interview at OpenStack Summit, Alan Clark, the OpenStack Foundation's chairman and SUSE's director of industry initiatives, emerging standards and open source, said "SUSE is agnostic about the public versus the private cloud. SUSE is already on AWS and it's the only one on Azure. If your model supports public cloud than you can buy a support subscription from us and deploy on the public cloud. We have a foot in both camps."

That said, Clark continued, "Over time, we see companies using public cloud for a lot of testing, but I'm convinced that enterprise workload will be more cost effective on the private cloud. Since, you can bring SUSE in from public to private, you can test on the public cloud, and then bring your workloads over to private once you're certain it works."

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At the same time, SUSE is engaged in supporting OpenStack. Pete Chadwick, senior product manager for SUSE OpenStack Cloud, said,"We fully support DefCore [OpenStack's defining components and trademark] and felt to change SUSE Cloud's name to SUSE OpenStack Cloud would be helpful."

SUSE OpenStack Cloud, which was released in March 2015, is based on the Juno OpenStack release. It includes the following features.

Enhanced networking flexibility: Additional networking functionality and additional support for third-party OpenStack networking plug-ins. In particular, it can implement distributed virtual routing, which enables individual compute nodes to handle routing tasks individually or as clusters.

Additional networking functionality and additional support for third-party OpenStack networking plug-ins. In particular, it can implement distributed virtual routing, which enables individual compute nodes to handle routing tasks individually or as clusters. Increased operational efficiency: The SUSE OpenStack Cloud installation framework can now seamlessly incorporate existing servers running outside of the private cloud into the cloud environment. In addition, SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 centralizes log collection and search, giving cloud administrators a single view into cloud operations and improving problem resolution speed.

The SUSE OpenStack Cloud installation framework can now seamlessly incorporate existing servers running outside of the private cloud into the cloud environment. In addition, SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 centralizes log collection and search, giving cloud administrators a single view into cloud operations and improving problem resolution speed. Integrated with SUSE Enterprise Storage and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 12: OpenStack Cloud 5 includes support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 as compute nodes within the cloud, giving customers the most current versions of KVM and Xen. The SLES 12 nodes can exist alongside SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 nodes.

OpenStack Cloud 5 includes support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 as compute nodes within the cloud, giving customers the most current versions of KVM and Xen. The SLES 12 nodes can exist alongside SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 nodes. Simplified services deployment:Standardization as an "as-a-service" model simplifies and speeds installation by eliminating the need for users to manage and configure these services. Simplified services deployment makes it easy to deploy private clouds tailored for development and big data.

So far, this release has worked well for SUSE and its customers. Chadwick said, "We're seeing customer traction in the last 6 months. It's been good validation on what we've done with making OpenStack flexible and enterprise ready."

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