SUSE introduces an open agentic AI ecosystem and unified infrastructure platform, enabling autonomous operations, greater flexibility, and reduced reliance on proprietary systems.
SUSE has introduced AI-driven updates to its infrastructure portfolio, positioning open-source platforms at the centre of autonomous operations. The company announced that SUSE Rancher Prime now features the industry’s first open agentic AI ecosystem, while SUSE Virtualization advances unified management of virtual machines (VMs) and containers.
The new ecosystem enables AI agents to operate across environments using the Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing direct integration with third-party tools without custom code. This marks a shift towards automated infrastructure operations powered by interoperable AI.
A key component is “Liz,” a context-aware AI agent that orchestrates multiple specialised agents to deliver automated insights for site reliability engineering (SRE) and operations teams, while providing full-stack visibility across hybrid environments.
SUSE Virtualization is positioned as an open alternative to proprietary hypervisors, introducing features such as NVIDIA Multi-Instance GPU (MIG) support, VM Auto Balance, Live Storage Migration, and granular upgrade controls to optimise workload efficiency and minimise downtime.
Developer-focused enhancements under SUSE Rancher Developer Access include a curated catalogue of over 140 hardened applications, featuring tools such as PostgreSQL, Redis, and Penpot, alongside secure base container images. Virtual Clusters further enable isolated Kubernetes environments for AI experimentation with multi-tenant GPU utilisation.
“Our open approach to AI and the unification of VM and container management allows customers to capitalize on the potential of AI and redefine their own operational simplicity, ultimately giving them flexibility, choice and control,” said Peter Smails, general manager, Cloud Native, SUSE. “SUSE’s mission is to be the open infrastructure platform for modern workloads and today’s updates significantly advance our strategy.”
“The software-defined compute market is undergoing significant change as enterprises look to modernize infrastructure amidst disruption in the traditional virtualization market,” said Gary Chen, Research Director, Software-Defined Compute, IDC. “While containers are the new standard for AI and modern workloads, virtual machines remain essential to the enterprise footprint. Infrastructure platforms that can unify these environments while providing automated, AI-driven operational tools will be key to helping organizations navigate this transition and achieve greater operational efficiency.”
The AI capabilities are generally available, with additional virtualization features rolling out in phases, and Virtual Clusters already production-ready.
