SUSE Rancher 2.6 Brings Enterprise Customers Improved Interoperability Across Multi-Cloud Cluster Environments

-Latest SUSE Rancher release is now available to help customers better manage their growing Kubernetes environments

-SUSE Rancher 2.6 provides enterprises with a crisp,enhanced user experience,full lifecycle management of hosted clusters in Microsoft AKS and Google GKE in addition to Amazon Web Services EKS,while fortifying their security and compliance posture

-Open interoperability of SUSE Rancher gives customers freedom to choose,mix and match solutions that best fit their business strategy

NUREMBERG,Germany,Sept. 1,2021 --SUSE®,a global leader in innovative,reliable and enterprise-grade open source solutions,today announced the availability of SUSE Rancher 2.6,the latest release of SUSE's open source enterprise Kubernetes management platform. SUSE Rancher 2.6 is the first major Rancher-related release from SUSE since its acquisition of Rancher Labs in December 2020.

"Kubernetes and container solutions are booming in popularity,environments are becoming more sophisticated,and there is no slowdown in sight," said Thomas Di Giacomo,SUSE Chief Technology and Product Officer. "We recognize that SUSE Rancher is a big part of that growth,having proven itself as a leading Kubernetes management technology and customer solution for thousands of enterprises. A key part of its success is its openness and interoperability. We continue to see customers innovate best when they have freedom to choose the products they believe best fit their needs,with flexibility to easily define and adapt their IT strategy. SUSE and SUSE Rancher 2.6 give businesses the opportunity to simply build,scale and transform their infrastructures with Kubernetes."

SUSE Rancher 2.6 features major updates across the platform that will help enterprise customers better manage their growing Kubernetes environments. Enhancements include a redesigned platform experience complete with a new crisp user interface with improved logic-based workflows,full lifecycle management of hosted Kubernetes clusters in Microsoft AKS and Google GKE alongside existing Amazon EKS capabilities,plus new security,risk and compliance features.

Steve Delaney,Cloud Enterprise Architect at multinational energy and automation company Schneider Electric,said,"In 2020,our Rancher platform experienced a 92% increase in the number of projects onboarded,and in 2021 we're seeing the same high level of engagement. SUSE Rancher 2.6 will further stoke demand with the addition of AKS and EKS support,while at the same time offering our operations team a single pane of glass through which to support this growing demand."

Important new customer benefits provided by SUSE Rancher 2.6 include:

Savings in time and resourceswithfurthersimplificationof users' Kubernetes deployments and managementof their clusters. Professionals who build within or manage growing environments now have access to a new crisp user interface and rearchitected workflows acrossthe platform. This reduction in visual noise,redesigned dashboards and improved single- and multi-cluster management experiencewithin a single pane of glass enables users to save time and resources neededto manage the operational requirements of clusters regardless of where they are hosted.

Broaderchoice andinfrastructurefreedomwithfull lifecycle management of clusters hosted in Microsoft AKS and Google GKE,adding toSUSE Rancher'sexisting support for hosted Amazon EKS clusters. Users with multi-cloud environments can now easily manage,secure and operate their hosted clusters within SUSE Rancher. Existing hosted clusters can also be imported and managed with the same proficiency level of SUSE Rancher deployed clusters,giving users true interoperability across their multi-cloud environmentsby empowering them to freely choose the right infrastructure and technology solutions fit for their organization. SUSE continues to accelerate technology partnerships with leading infrastructure providers in the pursuit of helping enterprises scale faster.

Greater confidence to build applications and scale environmentswith strengthenedenterprise security and compliance capabilities. To help usersfortify their existing and new clusterenvironments,SUSE Rancher 2.6 has begun integration with SUSE Linux Enterprise Base Container Images (SLE BCI) to deliver a free,open,flexible and secure foundation. SUSE Rancher 2.6 also now features enhancedaudit log traceability to help operators satisfy audit compliance requirements. A technical preview of GitOps provisioning with Cluster API isalso availablein SUSE Rancher 2.6 to give IT operators the ability to create custom cluster templates to help reduce user-errorrisk and standardize deployments.

SUSE Rancher is 100% open source and free from vendor lock-in,giving users the flexibility and ability to manage their containers across any certified Kubernetes distribution. SUSE Rancher helps IT professionals address the operational and security challenges of managing certified Kubernetes clusters in the data center,in the cloud and at the edge. It also provides DevOps teams with integrated tools for building and running containerized workloads at scale.

For more information about SUSE Rancher 2.6,visit www.suse.com/products/suse-rancher. To learn more about accelerating digital transformation using the industry's most innovative cloud-native platforms,see www.suse.com/solutions/cloud-native-transformation.

About SUSE

SUSE is a global leader in innovative,relied upon by more than 60% of the Fortune 500 to power their mission-critical workloads. We specialize in Enterprise Linux,Kubernetes Management,and Edge solutions,and collaborate with partners and communities to empower our customers to innovate everywhere – from the data center,to the cloud,to the edge and beyond. SUSE puts the "open" back in open source,giving customers the agility to tackle innovation challenges today and the freedom to evolve their strategy and solutions tomorrow. The company employs nearly 2000 people globally and is listed in the regulated market (Prime Standard) of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. For more information,visit www.suse.com.

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Contact:

Natalie Kelley

natalie.kelley@suse.com