SUSE has expanded the capabilities of its open infrastructure platform to make it easier for enterprises to deploy, manage and secure AI applications and business-critical workloads in hybrid environments. The proposal combines three main components: SUSE Rancher Prime, to manage Kubernetes applications and virtual machines; SUSE AI Factory, aimed at creating and running AI workloads; and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 16.1, the enterprise operating system that provides the foundation for cloud-native and virtualized environments.
The new features incorporate agentic artificial intelligence capabilities to automate and simplify infrastructure management, in addition to expanding support for immutable architectures, improving real-time performance and strengthening security. With this evolution, SUSE seeks to offer a platform capable of responding to the new needs of organizations, which need to modernize their systems without giving up control of the applications and technological environments they already use.
“As enterprises move from experimenting with AI to deploying it at scale, they need an infrastructure that can support new workloads alongside existing applications without compromising security, performance, or control,” said Dr. Thomas Di Giacomo, Chief Technology and Product Officer at SUSE. “SUSE brings greater intelligence and simplicity to infrastructure operations, while giving customers the freedom to innovate across their environments. “Our commitment to open infrastructure means organizations can adopt AI on their own terms, without being locked into a single technology stack or vendor.”
Open infrastructure gains weight
The evolution of artificial intelligence implementations is leading companies to pay more attention to the infrastructure necessary to deploy and manage these technologies. According to a recent study sponsored by SUSE, Kubernetes management is the top investment priority for IT decision-makers, followed by artificial intelligence. Additionally, 24% of respondents identify AI-assisted operational troubleshooting as one way to simplify Kubernetes management in hybrid environments.
Given this scenario, SUSE proposes a platform that combines intelligent operations, unified management and software supply chain protection mechanisms. The objective is to reduce the operational complexity and costs associated with infrastructure management, while maintaining the decision-making capacity of organizations over their own environments.
AI to manage Kubernetes and virtual machines
One of the main new features is SUSE Rancher Prime, which expands its AI-assisted management capabilities using Liz, a context-aware orchestrator, and AI Crew, a set of specialized subagents. These tools are designed to help technical teams diagnose problems, resolve workload issues, and manage infrastructure.
Integration with SUSE Virtualization extends these capabilities beyond Kubernetes, also incorporating virtual machines. This way, IT managers can manage different types of workloads from a common platform, simplifying operations in hybrid environments.
Also new is support for OAuth2, which allows Liz to connect to MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, as well as a new AI-oriented Rancher command line interface, which incorporates server-side simulation capabilities. Added to this is SUSE Observability StackPacks 2.0, which expands visibility over complex infrastructures and facilitates the identification and resolution of incidents.
These capabilities also respond to one of the challenges of business management: maintaining security controls without slowing down the work of teams. According to data provided by SUSE, 91% of organizations acknowledge that their employees bypass security controls at least occasionally to work faster. The combination of AI assistance and human approval mechanisms aims to improve efficiency without eliminating oversight over operations.
A unified platform for AI, Kubernetes and virtualization
Another focus of the update is the integration of Kubernetes applications, virtual machines and artificial intelligence workloads into the same management platform. SUSE Rancher Prime allows you to manage these environments, including those powered by SUSE AI Factory and SUSE AI Factory with NVIDIA, leveraging the investments that companies have already made in infrastructure.
In this area, SUSE Rancher Prime virtual clusters incorporate support for Hosted Control Plane mode, which allows you to offer Kubernetes as a service using RKE2. Meanwhile, the SUSE Storage v2 data engine provides up to ten times the performance for stateful workloads. New SUSE Virtualization networking capabilities, based on Kube-OVN, add support for overlay networks and tenant isolation. Native Cluster API infrastructure providers for RKE2 are also incorporated to simplify the administration of these environments.
The SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1 update completes this proposal by allowing traditional, immutable and real-time workloads to be managed under the same operating system lifecycle and a single support relationship. This approach seeks to reduce the complexity of infrastructures and facilitate their modernization without the need to undertake disruptive migrations.
The new version also incorporates an integrated Model Context Protocol (MCP) framework, available in the Tech Preview phase, which allows the use of artificial intelligence for infrastructure diagnosis and management. Building on SLES for NVIDIA, designed to support next-generation infrastructures accelerated by NVIDIA, SLES 16.1 also adds Live Patching, post-quantum cryptography preparation, and software supply chain verification mechanisms.
More protection for the software supply chain
Security constitutes the third pillar of the novelties. SUSE extends protection mechanisms from the development phases to the execution of applications, with special attention to the reliability of the components used in artificial intelligence projects and the detection of vulnerabilities.
In this sense, SUSE Application Collection includes more than 1,000 Python libraries from verified sources. These components include software bill of materials (SBOM) and sourcing information, tools that enable developers to understand their application dependencies and reduce supply chain risks. Many of these libraries are also part of the SUSE AI Factory AI component catalog, providing a traceable foundation for developing and deploying new workloads.
SUSE Rancher Prime expands its capabilities with Liz, a context-aware orchestrator, and AI Crew, a set of specialized subagents
The company is also preparing SUSE Security 6.0, whose next version will incorporate SUSE Security Vulnerability Scanner, intended to identify and prioritize vulnerabilities in deployed workloads and cluster nodes, and SUSE Security Runtime Enforcer, which will allow detecting and blocking anomalous behavior during execution. Both capabilities extend the platform’s protection capabilities throughout the entire lifecycle of AI applications.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1 is now available. SUSE Rancher Prime enhancements will arrive according to their respective release schedules. The MCP framework built into SLES 16.1 is in Tech Preview, while the new AI-focused Rancher CLI and the Hosted Control Plane mode of SUSE Rancher Prime Virtual Clusters are available in open beta. The company will add new capabilities with the next versions of SUSE Rancher Prime and SUSE Security.
