KubeCon 2025 Report: SUSE Is Diving Deeper Into the Channel

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025, Atlanta: After being founded in 1992 in Germany, open source and Linux vendor SUSE built itself into a well-known brand across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Yet SUSE’s footprint in North America has never been anything close to that of its major enterprise open source Linux competitor, Red Hat, which dominates the Linux and open source market here.

But SUSE’s new chief marketing officer, Margaret Dawson, who began her new job in September, says she is already working to change that scenario and earn SUSE a bigger slice of the pie in the North American marketplace.

And that mission starts with boosting the company’s participation and visibility in the channel, she told ChannelE2E here at the recent KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 conference.
“It is not just important, but it is critical, especially in North America,” said Dawson. “We already have a SUSE Rancher government services channel to work with the federal government, but we have got to unlock the [broader] channel in North America.”

That will start, Dawson said, with a bold push to increase SUSE’s brand awareness across the industry with channel partners and their customers. “My ‘Job One’ is getting people to know who SUSE is, because we do not do enough just to show up.”

Dawson brings a broad range of CMO, channel, and product marketing experience to SUSE, including roles at Chronosphere, Apptio, HP Helion, Symform, Hubspan, and Microsoft. She has also worked for archrival Red Hat, where she served as chief of staff in the CEO’s office and as a vice president for diversity and inclusion and for portfolio product marketing.

“I have been privileged to have worked with a very strong channel throughout my career,” she said. “The channel today is more service partners and solution integrators, where they are building customized products for customers. They are trying to bring together the best pieces. They do not care if it is a green stack, a red stack, a purple stack, or a blue stack. They have to believe that we are here, that we are big, that we are important, and that we are going to invest in the channel.”

Today, SUSE offers a broad range of enterprise open source software, including Linux operating systems, Kubernetes container management, and edge and AI platforms as well.
For the company, working more closely with the channel will be key to its targeted market expansion in North America.

SUSE’s Message to Channel Partners

“What do I want to tell the channel?” said Dawson. “I would just say check us out. Call me, let’s talk. Tell us how we can help. It is the same thing I ask customers—where is your greatest pain? How can we help you? I mean, that is why we are here.”

“I like to say to customers and partners, we will meet you where you are,” she said. “Tell me where you want to get, and then let’s incrementally build the building blocks.”

MSPs, VARs, system integrators, and other partners are an important part of Dawson’s plans, particularly MSPs that work with mid-sized to larger business customers, she said. “More and more, customers are building customized applications because it has become a competitive edge. But they do not want to host it. Maybe they do not want to build it because they cannot afford to keep up with the latest technology. What we can provide is a way for MSPs to look across their customers with SUSE Multi-Linux  Manager, with things like AI, and with tools that are becoming a better control plane.”

To fill these roles, channel partners will be critical to helping SUSE meet these market challenges, she said. “We will not be able to scale without the channel. The hyperscalers alone are not going to be able to answer it.”

Kubernetes Is Moving to a Platform Play, Not Just a Developer Interest: Analyst

Torsten Volk, an application modernization analyst with Omdia who attended KubeCon 2025, told ChannelE2E that he was pleased when he heard that SUSE had hired Dawson as its new CMO.

“I know Margaret from her time at Chronosphere and was positively surprised when I saw that SUSE hired someone off the A-list,” said Volk. “That is a good sign indeed.”

Volk said he was also pleased to see more channel partners in attendance at KubeCon 2025, as Kubernetes has moved from developer-led adoption to a platform play.

“‘KubeCon Goes Enterprise’ is my title for the Atlanta conference,” said Volk. “This is when the channel gets interested, as they start to understand the budgeting and buying process. AI, app modernization, and, believe it or not, virtualization were the big drivers behind these platform conversations. Now channel partners have the perspective of selling packaged services and multi-year contracts, as the cloud-native universe has moved from nerdy to business-critical.”

For channel partners, this is perfect timing for business growth in the segment, he added. “Vendors like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Azure, and hybrid cloud vendors like Red Hat, SUSE, and Canonical are all competing for AI workloads and need partners to help customers build out these platforms based on their respective infrastructure. The more vendors can convince the channel that their platform is the way to make money, the more these partners will come on board and choose the respective vendor’s platform as one of their standard offerings. AI has basically pushed the cloud-native universe into prime time.”

Because SUSE’s stack is more modular and less integrated than products from competitors like Red Hat, “the company has to rely heavily on partners to be able to offer customers a best-of-both-worlds solution,” said Volk. “SUSE contributes the upstream open source technologies and reference architectures, while the partners wrap all this into packaged, near-turnkey offerings. Business-critical topics like VMware replacement, platform engineering, and AI all need to be delivered by someone with the manpower and expertise to ensure customer success. Therefore, SUSE heavily relies on the channel to make these partners feel comfortable with its platforms.”