PRAGUE, April 20, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — SUSECON 2026 — SUSE®, a global leader of enterprise open source solutions, today announced the winners of the 2026 SUSE Customer Awards at SUSECON Prague, honoring 12 organizations across four continents. The global awards program celebrates organizations that are redefining what’s possible with open source, using SUSE solutions to accelerate innovation, deliver outstanding business results and create meaningful impact on the economy, environment and society.
“Our mission at SUSE is to transform open source innovations into enterprise-grade solutions, giving our customers the power of choice and the foundation for lasting resilience,” said Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, SUSE’s Chief Executive Officer. “By gathering at SUSECON to honor these outstanding customers, we reaffirm our values as leaders in open source and as true partners. We are stronger when we are together, co-innovating to ensure that the digital backbone of our economy, environment and society remains robust and adaptable for the future.”
The 2026 Winners
EGGER Group – Advocate Award
A global leader in wood-based materials, EGGER Group is proving that heritage manufacturers can lead the way in technology adoption. A SUSE customer since 2005, the company uses SUSE Rancher Prime and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP® applications to power global operations, strengthen sustainability efforts and modernize core business processes, while gaining the speed, resilience and insight needed to stay ahead in a competitive market.
FETC – AI Accelerator
Combining its expertise with parent company Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection (FETC), FETCi (FETC international) has built upon the solid foundation of ETC operations to pioneer advanced applications for smart cities and intelligent transportation. FETCi was honored for using SUSE Edge, SUSE Security and SUSE Multi-Linux Manager to implement scalable Edge solutions for managing smart parking sites. This innovation reduced site deployment time from one hour to just 10 minutes, significantly increasing operational agility.
Nexi Group – Cloud Native Champion
Nexi, Europe’s leader in digital payments, won for leveraging SUSE Rancher Prime to support its large-scale operations, processing billions of transactions annually. By increasing operational efficiency by 80% while maintaining an industry-leading 99.99% service continuity, Nexi has solidified its position as a leader in secure, high-velocity financial technology.
Airbus Defense & Space – Digital Sovereignty Pioneer
A leader in the European defence industry, Airbus Defence and Space was recognized for its groundbreaking work in enhancing Kubernetes tailored security in collaboration with SUSE, specifically designed to meet the stringent requirements of National CyberSecurity Offices. The project created new industry standards and ensured the highest levels of security for mission critical information systems, reinforcing their trusted software supply chain. This end-to-end approach aligns with the highest standards of digital sovereignty and operational trust, while maintaining flexibility and independence in Kubernetes deployments. Airbus Defence and Space chose open source, co-engineered with SUSE, as their trusted and secured foundation.
Dienst ICT (DICTU) – Digital Sovereignty Pioneer
One of the largest state-owned IT providers for the Dutch public sector, DICTU was recognized for its rapid response during the pandemic. In just two months, DICTU launched a critical digital healthcare gateway with SUSE Rancher Prime, enabling secure access to essential healthcare services while maintaining strict EU digital sovereignty standards and keeping public data secure and accessible. Today, DICTU uses SUSE Rancher Prime to support over 1,500 government applications agencywide.
CVS Health – Edge Innovator
CVS Health, a leading health solutions company with more than 9,000 CVS pharmacy locations, was recognized for using SUSE Edge to create an automated application delivery environment across these pharmacy locations. This large-scale deployment helped streamline pharmacy operations and strengthened the reliability of mission-critical point-of-sale systems.
Carnival Corporation – Edge Innovator
Carnival Corporation, the world’s largest cruise company, is rewriting the rules of edge computing at sea. Recognized for a large-scale deployment of SUSE Rancher Prime and K3s, the company has successfully unified 180+ distributed datacenters across its fleet of over 90 ships. This standardization has significantly reduced operational risks for safety and mission-critical systems at sea.
Grupo Elektra – Geeko Innovation Award
A leading financial and retail corporation in Latin America, Grupo Elektra won for its outstanding transition to a resilient Kubernetes platform based on SUSE Rancher Prime and AWS. The corporation combined mission-critical reliability with environmental responsibility, achieving a 35% drop in energy consumption, a 35% reduction in costs and near-zero application downtime.
Omnicell, Inc. – Innovation for Good
In healthcare, often every second counts. Omnicell, a leading healthcare technology provider focused on empowering healthcare through autonomous medication management, was recognized for its revolutionary XT Amplify innovation Program. Powered by SUSE Edge, XT Amplify provides enhanced functionality designed to maximize the value of Omnicell’s XT Automated Dispensing cabinets. XT Amplify is focused on improving nursing efficiency while reducing medication errors and waste, which is meant to allow clinicians to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time focused on patient care. To enable this level of efficiency, Omnicell implemented a modern microservices architecture by migrating its entire platform to SUSE Linux and containers.
Mizuho Bank – Open Source Excellence
Widely acknowledged as one of Japan’s three “megabanks,” Mizuho Bank was recognized for its strategic 10-year modernization roadmap, which began with a mandate to eliminate vendor lock-in by transferring over 200 legacy servers to SUSE Multi-Linux Support. A SUSE evangelist, the bank has become a leader in promoting cloud native and zero-trust architectures within the global financial sector.
PepsiCo – Open Source Excellence
PepsiCo was recognized for advancing enterprise-wide modernization by building a consistent, scalable foundation for its multi-cloud strategy, with SUSE as a core component of its enterprise platform. Through the migration of more than 1,000 legacy systems, the company has simplified its technology landscape, consolidated data centers, and enabled new capabilities across the business, from powering global SAP environments to deploying AI-driven quality control in manufacturing.
Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) – Virtualization Visionary
The Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) is redefining how modern HPC infrastructure is delivered. The institute was honored for using SUSE Virtualization and SUSE Rancher Prime to unify VM and Kubernetes operations across a complex environment supporting critical supercomputing services. Managed by just two engineers, the platform gives scientists faster, more reliable access to the environments behind cutting-edge research.
Supporting Quotes
“For 20 years, SUSE is one of the most consistent software solutions we’ve had at EGGER. That’s a constant we can build on and that we very much like to build on. The ability to get everything from a single, tested source was a huge benefit for us. Knowing that SUSE tests the packages in advance gives us confidence. It simplifies our security efforts and ensures that all our packages work together harmoniously.” – Oliver Widhölzl, Manager Data Center Operations, EGGER Group.
“Infrastructure is often invisible, but it is the foundation that keeps the world running. Together with SUSE and the power of open source, we are proud to help move smart transportation forward.” – Elaine Chen, Senior Manager and Deputy Director, Far Eastern Electronic Toll Collection Co., Ltd. (FETC)
“Our aim is to equip the business with the tools they need to build and innovate. The proven reliability of SUSE Rancher Prime, as well as its centralized management and observability features, are key to our ability to spin up new environments quickly and meet tight deadlines.” – Stefano Bovo, Area Manager for South Europe Cloud Engineering, Nexi Group.
“As leaders in Defence and Space and open source technologies, Airbus and SUSE are joining forces to drive innovation in Software Defined Defence. Our collaboration accelerates the delivery of secure, sovereign and cloud native solutions for the modern defence ecosystem, setting the standard for the next generation of software-defined missions.” – Mirko Reuter, Head of Innovation & Technology, Airbus Defence and Space
“We liked that SUSE Rancher Prime retained its open source DNA while offering critical enterprise support and additional security assurances. This allowed us to maintain flexibility and future-proof our infrastructure.” – Pieter Steendam, Product Owner, Central Managed Kubernetes platform (DCMP), Dienst ICT
“As software, hardware and AI converge, the real advantage is treating complex, distributed systems as a unified platform, where consistency is designed in and not bolted on afterwards.” – Yogesh Bhagat, Vice President Digital and Technology at CVS Health
“With SUSE Rancher and K3S, we can manage and roll out applications fleet wide from a single platform, using a small footprint and approach that doesn’t strain shipboard bandwidth.” – Tommaso Paoletto, Cloud Engineer and Kubernetes Expert, Carnival Corporation
“In addition to offering flexibility, high performance, a low total cost of ownership and seamless integration with our existing systems, SUSE technology provides us with robust security and the ability to meet regulatory requirements, essential elements for operating with confidence in the financial market.” – José Efrain Ramon Pacheco, Cloud Operations Director, Grupo Elektra
“The SUSE Edge Suite establishes a powerful foundation for the future of Omnicell’s cloud native medication management platform, OmniSphere. For us, it delivers the security, reliability and scalability that we believe will help us fulfill our vision of enabling truly autonomous medication management.” – Igor Palant, Director of Platform Infrastructure, Omnicell
“With cyber threats evolving rapidly, there is no time to waste. Migrating mission-critical legacy infrastructure is a complex challenge and SUSE Multi-Linux Support allowed us to secure our environment without the risks of immediate migration.” – Keiji Mori, Director, Platform Engineering Business Unit, Mizuho
“We aim to make deploying and managing our Kubernetes clusters and virtual machines as simple as possible. Rancher Prime with SUSE Virtualization helps us achieve this.” – Dino Conciatore, Systems Engineer, Swiss National Supercomputing Center
About SUSE
SUSE is a global leader of enterprise open source software. By transforming community innovations into secure, sovereign and AI-ready solutions, SUSE empowers customers to escape vendor lock-in and regain control of their IT destiny. Through industry-leading Linux, Kubernetes, Edge and AI infrastructure solutions, SUSE delivers the flexibility to innovate everywhere—from the data center to multi-cloud and out to the edge. Only SUSE also manages many Linux and Kubernetes distributions. At SUSE, Choice Happens because we prioritize community, interoperability and relentless innovation. Discover how we power mission-critical resilience at http://www.suse.com.
Media Contact:
Rachel Romoff
rachel.romoff@suse.com
