Author: Alan Shimel

Every tech conference likes to say it is about the future. Most of them are really about product launches, roadmaps and a little carefully managed optimism.

SUSECON feels different this year.

Part of that is timing. Part of it is geography. And part of it is that SUSE happens to sit right in the middle of several conversations that are becoming more urgent by the day. The event runs April 20 through 23 in Prague, with more than 100 breakout sessions covering Linux, cloud native infrastructure, edge computing, AI, observability and digital sovereignty, along with keynotes, hands-on labs, certification exams and community gatherings. That is the official agenda. The real story sits just beneath it.

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The deeper conversation is about control.

For a long time, sovereignty sounded like the kind of topic that lived mostly in policy papers or conference panels in Brussels. It did not always feel connected to the daily work of the people actually building and operating systems. That has changed. Sovereignty is no longer a niche European discussion. It is becoming a global infrastructure question, and yes, that includes the United States.

When organizations talk about sovereignty today, what they really mean is control. Who controls the data? Who controls the platform choices? Who ultimately controls the lifecycle of the infrastructure stack? And whether companies still have room to make their own decisions in a world where more and more of the technology landscape is consolidating around a few dominant providers.

SUSE has leaned into that theme at this year’s event. Digital sovereignty shows up across the agenda and even has a dedicated Sovereign Summit alongside the main conference. It is not difficult to see why. Customers everywhere are wrestling with the same underlying question. How do you move forward technologically without giving up the freedom to make your own choices?

That is where open infrastructure enters the picture.

If sovereignty is the goal, open infrastructure is one of the few realistic paths to get there. You do not achieve real control by simply swapping one dependency for another one with better branding. Control comes from building on technologies that give you portability, visibility and leverage.

Linux still matters. Kubernetes still matters. Open platforms still matter. Hybrid and multi-cloud architectures matter. The ability to move workloads, govern data and adapt your architecture without being boxed into someone else’s roadmap matters even more.

None of this is ideological. It is operational.

That is part of why SUSECON is worth paying attention to this year. SUSE has long lived at the intersection of open source principles and enterprise reality. The company understands both the community roots of Linux and the practical demands of organizations running large-scale infrastructure. Today, those worlds are colliding in a new way.

Open source is no longer just about developer preference, community participation or cost savings. It is becoming a strategic layer in how enterprises think about resilience, independence and long-term risk.

And then there is AI.

AI dominates almost every technology conversation right now, but infrastructure is the real story underneath it. The future of AI will not be decided only by which models perform best. It will also be shaped by where those models run, how the data pipelines are built, how orchestration happens and who ultimately controls the environment those systems depend on.

That is where things get very real very quickly.

AI infrastructure pipelines require enormous compute, complex orchestration, data governance, security controls and lifecycle management. The more organizations invest in AI, the more they have to confront the underlying infrastructure choices that make those systems possible.

And increasingly, they want to build those pipelines without surrendering control of their stack.

That is why I do not see AI as separate from sovereignty and open infrastructure. I see it as the force making both issues impossible to postpone.

When Margaret Dawson, SUSE’s chief marketing officer, joined me recently on Techstrong TV to preview this year’s event, she talked about the conference theme “Shape Your Resilient Future” in exactly those terms. Organizations are dealing with rapid AI change, escalating cybersecurity threats and growing geopolitical pressures. Digital sovereignty, she explained, is no longer just a European concept. It is becoming a global movement as enterprises look for ways to maintain control, security and choice while still pushing innovation forward.

That framing captures why SUSECON feels particularly relevant this year.

Prague also turns out to be a fitting place to have this conversation. It is a city shaped by centuries of change and reinvention, a place where questions of power, independence and identity have always carried real meaning. For a conference centered on open systems and technological resilience, the setting feels surprisingly appropriate.

Techstrong will be on the ground there all week, and not quietly.

I will be conducting interviews and recording videos for Techstrong.tv, attending keynotes, and spending time talking with partners, customers and attendees to hear what they are really seeing in the field. Techstrong Chief Content Officer Mike Vizard will also be there, which means readers will get his perspective on where the enterprise reality aligns with or diverges from the vendor messaging. Futurum analyst Mitch Ashley will be joining us as well, bringing the kind of industry context that helps separate durable trends from the noise that inevitably surrounds big events.

We will also be recording Techstrong Gang live from SUSECON throughout the week. The Gang tends to work best when conversations are happening in real time and people are reacting to what they are seeing and hearing around them. Doing it from the event floor should make those discussions even more interesting.

Of course, not everyone can make it to Prague, which is why we will also be publishing a daily SUSECON newsletter throughout the event. Each edition will highlight the most important announcements, the themes emerging from sessions, the best moments from interviews and the conversations that feel like they might matter six months from now, not just six hours after the keynote ends. You can sign up for this special edition, 5-day newsletter here.

If sovereignty, open infrastructure, Linux, Kubernetes or the future of enterprise AI matter to you, it will be worth following along.

SUSECON will certainly bring its share of product announcements. That is expected. But that is not really what has my attention this year.

What interests me is the broader shift happening underneath those announcements. More organizations are beginning to understand that the race to deploy AI is also a race to build the infrastructure that will support it. And that infrastructure raises a deeper set of questions about control, independence and long-term flexibility.

Who owns the stack?
Who governs the data?
Who sets the rules of the platform?

Those questions start with sovereignty. They lead directly to open infrastructure. And AI is the force making both impossible to ignore.

That is why Techstrong is heading to Prague.

Because if you want to understand where enterprise infrastructure is heading next, you do not just watch the AI headlines. You watch the foundations being built underneath them.

And this year, SUSECON looks like one of the places where those foundations will be on display.