SUSE is getting out of the OpenStack game and placing its evolutionary bet on application delivery, Kubernetes, and DevOps. The move is a drastic change for the long-time OpenStack supporter and is another hit to the OpenStack community.

Michael Miller, president of corporate development at SUSE, explained in a blog post that the move comes following a review of its current operations.

“As we make these bold customer-driven investments and in order to maximize these opportunities, SUSE has carefully reviewed its business and has decided to cease production of new versions of SUSE OpenStack Cloud and to discontinue sales of SUSE OpenStack Cloud,” he wrote.

In an email to SDxCentral, Miller echoed his blog post comments highlighting the company’s need to “focus on the growing importance of cloud native and container technologies to meet current and future customer needs and align with technology trends around application delivery, Kubernetes, and DevOps.”

As such, SUSE’s future will be built on its Cloud Application Platform and CaaS (container-as-a-service) Platform products.

Miller said that SUSE was working with customers impacted by the decision. This includes support through “their remaining subscription period and as they transfer to alternatives.”

"All affected customers and partners have been informed of this change," Miller explained in his email. "As SUSE discontinues the sale of SUSE OpenStack Cloud we are engaging with customers to support them through their remaining subscription period, working closely with them to transition forward and to engage with them on their current and future application delivery needs."

Those alternatives could come from players like IBM/Red Hat, VMware, Canonical, and Mirantis.

The company did rope in a comment from IDC analyst Al Gillen to help justify their decision.

“Digitally determined customers work to achieve differentiation with applications and experiences, rather than through infrastructure deployments," Gillen commented in the blog post. "SUSE’s decision to focus its future investments to better enable application delivery moves the company’s value-add higher up the technology stack, to a level where customers want and need tools that empower them to achieve differentiation."

The company review comes on the heels of it being acquired by Sweden-based private equity fund EQT VIII for $2.5 billion. That deal, which closed in May, came with the stipulation that the new owner would remain an independent entity.

Shortly after that deal closed, SUSE named Brent Schroeder as its new global CTO where he replaced long-time CTO Thomas Di Giacomo, who moved to president of engineering, product, and innovation at the company. It then named former SAP COO and Chief Revenue Officer Melissa Di Donato as its new CEO, who replaced a retiring Nils Brauckmann.

SUSE has a strong history with OpenStack. It purchased some of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE’s) OpenStack and Cloud Foundry assets in 2017, and offered its OpenStack Cloud through an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) model. It’s most recent update to that platform was unveiled just last month.

Miller said that SUSE plans to continue working with the OpenStack Foundation (OSF) despite the company's new direction.

"SUSE will continue to work closely with the OpenStack Foundation as we adjust the nature of our engagement in the project to align with our go-forward plans," he wrote. "SUSE engineers will continue to be involved in upstream OpenStack development as we focus on supporting our valued customers. In addition, SUSE will continue to evaluate and engage, where appropriate, in specific OSF projects besides OpenStack when they align with our customers’ and partners’ needs."

The move away from OpenStack comes at a time when that community has begun preaching a more collaborative tone.

“The only way we create a world running on open infrastructure is together,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director of the OpenStack Foundation, during his opening keynote at this year’s OpenStack Foundation Open Infrastructure Show. “Our community is big, and the problems we’re solving [in open infrastructure] are significant.”

However, a number of vendors at that event noted that many telecom operators and service providers would likely either minimize or completely bypass the use of OpenStack for a more cloud-native containerized deployment architecture if they could.

“It’s almost like OpenStack is boring and everyone is looking to Kubernetes now,” said Sandro Mazziotta, director of NFV product management at Red Hat, in an interview during the show. “The discussion has really pivoted.”

One positive for OpenStack remains its maturity level compared to cloud-native platforms like Kubernetes.

Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth, for one, explained that it would be “naive” at this point to expect a telecom operator or a bank to use Kubernetes alone to power their network in a production environment.

This angle was echoed by Amy Wheelus, VP of AT&T’s Network Cloud, who also cited the need for the cloud native space to gain more maturity before it could be considered an all-powerful option. The carrier is helping those efforts by using both Kubernetes and OpenStack as part of its Airship deployment. Wheelus made it clear that, “OpenStack is critical to our success and what we are doing with Airship.”

Mazziotta said that he expects telecom operators that are virtualizing parts of their infrastructure to support 5G services to initially rely on OpenStack and more traditional virtual machines (VMs). However, he added that he then expects Kubernetes and containers to be a growing part of those deployments during the second half of next year.

“It’s really a safety net to do a trial on OpenStack and then move to production,” Mazziotta said. “Then I see them moving to Kubernetes and containers.”

UPDATE: This story has been updated with comments from SUSE.