Why virtualization modernization remains enterprise IT’s hardest leap

Enterprises are locked in a long-term standoff with legacy infrastructure, with growing demand for virtualization modernization that doesn’t require a full rebuild.

SUSE S.A. has positioned itself to help customers bridge that gap, but the challenge is less technical than psychological, according to Imran Khan (pictured), chief customer officer of SUSE. Organizations with imposing, decades-old environments understand the need to modernize, yet still struggle with the complexity, skill gaps and the risk of shifting critical workloads to a new foundation. To that end, SUSE has built out assessment services, migration tooling and a support layer designed to lower the barrier to entry.

“When you see our customer base — how do they get from one side of the chasm to the other?” Khan said. “We’re trying to make sure that we give them that level of comfort to say, look, we’ve got all the technology to help you get there and also wrapping around a lot of our white-glove services to ensure they can take that leap of faith.”

Khan spoke with theCUBE’s Paul Nashawaty at SUSECON 2026, for an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed closing the gap between legacy virtualization environments, virtualization modernization and modern Kubernetes-based infrastructure without vendor lock-in. (* Disclosure below.)

Virtualization modernization demands frictionless migration

Enterprises are pushing back on providers to reduce complexity rather than add to it. The proliferation of point solutions has left many IT teams managing a patchwork of tools that don’t talk to each other, compounding both cost and risk. SUSE’s response is a platform-first approach that manages virtual machines and containers under a single control plane, eliminating siloed tooling that drives up the cost of ownership, according to Khan.

“We realize that there’s a balance that we need to strike,” he said. “We’re trying to make sure we do strong partnerships on the technology side, but also on the services side and the support side, making sure that we’re not going to have all the skills at our fingertips, but if there’s things that we can do out there to augment that — [that’s] absolutely a must.”

That partnership emphasis extends to how SUSE handles the lock-in question — with its multi-vendor support strategy as proof that migration doesn’t have to mean disruption, Khan explained. Customers moving from a competing virtualization platform to SUSE have reported minimal disruption during the transition, he added.

“If you want to take a slow approach, you can, based on the services that we’ve developed to handhold you through that journey,” Khan said. “If you want to move fast, we’ve got those partnerships to allow us to lift and shift very quickly.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of SUSECON 2026:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for SUSECON 2026. Sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE