IBM and SUSE – working together

IBM and SUSE have been partnering for nearly 25 years through the delivery of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE, and continue to work closely together to the benefit of our common clients and partners. In fact, SUSE Linux was the first Linux distribution to be made available commercially for the IBM Z architecture. With SUSECON 2024 set to begin this week in Berlin, we’ll highlight what IBM and SUSE have accomplished together.

Scalability, performance, reliability, security, and low total cost of ownership are key enterprise Linux values which are shared by IBM and SUSE – and are critical for businesses and organizations.

For example, SICOOB – Brazil’s leading credit union – has been a long-time user of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and IBM LinuxONE. They have reduced costs and supported increases in business volumes through workload consolidation from distributed systems to IBM LinuxONE and SUSE Linux. In addition, SICOOB have experienced a reduction in electricity costs along with easier systems management when compared with distributed systems.

And Nowy Styl, an office furniture provider in Poland, needed to improve the performance, security and scalability of its hybrid computing infrastructure and prepare the system for future business growth. Nowy Styl saw their business-critical processing speeds increase and their software licensing costs decrease by moving to IBM LinuxONE with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

IBM and SUSE collaboratively support SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on the latest families of IBM servers, including the IBM z16 mainframe and the IBM LinuxONE 4 dedicated Linux system. SUSE and IBM also work with new customers interested in bringing new workloads to IBM LinuxONE 4 Express, an entry level enterprise-grade Linux server.

SUSE offers through the IBM Cloud support subscription for SUSE Linux Enterprise Linux. This provides customers and ISVs a flexible deployment option in the IBM Cloud on IBM LinuxONE systems as they leverage s390x based Virtual Server Instances (VSI).

SUSE also offers additional products like SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SUSE Manager, Live Patching, and High Availability on IBM Z and LinuxONE. And the ecosystem of ISVs is available for SUSE Linux on IBM Z and LinuxONE which includes Oracle and Fujitsu Enterprise PostgreSQL – as well as IBM DB2, IBM MQ, and IBM WebSphere.

One area of joint development work has been around IBM Secure Execution for Linux, which provides hardware-supported confidential computing capabilities to protect data-in-use while it is held in memory – both on-prem and in the cloud through IBM Hyper Protect Virtual Server in conjunction with applications built on SUSE Base Container Images.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a key area of focus today and for the future. The IBM Telum processor at the heart of IBM z16 and IBM LinuxONE 4 includes an on-chip integrated AI unit, which can accelerate predictive inferencing use cases such as fraud prevention and medical image analysis. Support for the AI unit has already been added to popular open source AI frameworks such as TensorFlow which run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and elite support is available through the IBM AI Toolkit for IBM Z and LinuxONE.

In summary, the collaboration between IBM Z and SUSE continues to thrive and develop, driven by the needs of our joint clients and partners.

Visit the SUSE Partner Alliance website to find out more about SUSE and IBM, and visit the IBM Z and IBM LinuxONE websites to discover more about IBM Z and LinuxONE servers.

Written by Jerry Hosch and Adam Jollans, Program Director, IBM LinuxONE Product Marketing. In collaboration with Rob Culp and Mike Friesenegger from SUSE.