Cloud-first for the future

Call for change

After a carve out, SUSE Software Solutions, a global leader in innovative, reliable and enterprise-grade open source solutions, had the chance to reinvent itself with greenfield business process and a whole new Enterprise IT landscape.

SUSE engaged Accenture to help it discover, plan and navigate the best way forward after it was sold by Micro Focus to investment company EQT Partners. Together, we designed a way for SUSE to leave behind old ways of working and complex legacy systems and create a new, standalone company purpose-built for growth.

The goal was to enable SUSE’s mission to empower customers to innovate everywhere – from the data center, to the cloud, to the edge and beyond.

It was a huge undertaking under intense time pressure, since SUSE faced fees for using Micro Focus’ systems and processes after the legal separation.

When tech meets human ingenuity

With the clock ticking, Accenture designed and built a new end-to-end IT Enterprise landscape running 100% in the cloud. We assembled best-of-breed applications for core business processes—where possible using standard functionality to minimize customization.

These included applications for procurement, accounting, billing, marketing, sales, analytics and reporting. We also created an enterprise integration middleware for harmonized and flexible integration. A cloud-first system now run on AWS, it features a LAN-as-a-Service network and, naturally, SUSE runs its own leading SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system.

Accenture assembled a diverse team of 200 specialists from our businesses in 25 locations worldwide to meet project goals early. Sander Huyts, Chief Operating Officer (COO) at SUSE, said: “Accenture built a new house for the company. All we needed to do was move in, switch on the lights and continue doing what we do best.”

A valuable difference

The company is now poised to grow its business in completely new directions. With new, touchless finance and sales processes built around the customer, its partners can easily buy and self-register their products online, receiving an automated invoice a month later.

The user experience has been transformed to create a better experience for partners and better operational efficiency for SUSE. And, as its business grows, SUSE’s cloud-based billing can scale rapidly to process many million more invoices.

Augmented by automation and AI, SUSE’s technical sales teams are also cross-selling, and sales are up 27%.

Furthermore, SUSE can attract and retain the best developer talent from the open-source Linux ecosystem, as developers across the community can seamlessly collaborate and share code. That’s key to new growth for the business from now on.

Meet the team

Dominik Krimpmann
Managing Director – Accenture Technology Strategy & Advisory, Mergers & Acquisitions Lead, Europe
LinkedIn

Marc Ruhnow
Managing Director, Accenture SAP Lead Products
LinkedIn

Andreas Helbing
Associate Director – Accenture Technology, Austria, Switzerland, Germany
LinkedIn