TALKING

Business leaders today aim to operate with a comprehensive security model to cover all bases and ensure they are boosting productivity . Gerald Pfeifer , CTO , SUSE , discusses the organisation ’ s latest report and also explains how businesses must manage a diverse set of technologies , Edge locations and environments efficiently to ensure greater control and security across their infrastructure .

Can you give us an overview of the Understanding how enterprises can securely innovate with modern infrastructure report and what the research set out to achieve ?

I engage with customers and non-customers , as do my colleagues in product management and other departments , however , there are times when we seek a broader perspective . The worst scenario is when a CTO extrapolates too much from one or two customer meetings and in order to mitigate this , we interviewed 250 CEOs , CISOs and general IT decision-makers . This comprehensive approach complements the insights we gain from our regular conversations .

What were some of the highlights and key findings of the report ?

The first insight was somewhat surprising . When we asked about priorities , application performance emerged as the top concern – this was unexpected , as I usually hear about security and agility being the primary focus . However , delving into the numbers , application performance led by a small margin .

Following closely – and with nearly the same number of points – were security , agility and availability of services . This makes sense as excellent application performance is crucial , but it is worthless if your service is unavailable , compromised by hackers , or you become a victim of ransomware .

The report contains extensive data on various areas such as containers , Edge Computing and Linux . However , three common threads stood out ; firstly , security was a recurring theme . Related to this was whole life cycle management , which also encompasses the complexity of managing diverse environments . The term ‘ complexity ’ frequently arose , highlighting concerns around control . Automation emerged as vital to maintaining control , ensuring security and fostering agility .

Furthermore , using multiple Linux distributions , multicloud and hybrid cloud environments were prevalent . Managing Edge locations consistently and securely was also a significant concern . It is no longer a question of ‘ this or that ’; rather , it is about managing a diverse set of technologies , Edge locations and environments efficiently to ensure greater control and security .

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