What's Unique in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3?

On July 8, SUSE unveiled Service Pack 3 (SP3) of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, adding a slew of new features to the open source OS. But are they enough to give it an edge in the enterprise server software market? Here’s what SUSE executives had to say in response to that question in a recent interview about what sets SLES 11 SP3 apart from other enterprise Linux distributions.

It can be hard to stand out in the open source ecosystem, where vendors often base their end user products on the same freely available upstream software. SUSE doesn’t have access to much code that its competitors—including Red Hat (RHT) and Canonical‘s Ubuntu—don’t also use in their own enterprise Linux distributions.

But in a recent interview about the SP3 release, Marcus Kraft, senior product manager for SUSE Linux Enterprise, pointed to four main areas where the latest version of SLES 11 offers features that no competing platform does. They include:

Representatives of SUSE’s competitors might take issue with some of Kraft’s claims about SLES 11 SP3’s uniqueness. But without entering into that debate, the traits he emphasized highlight the feature sets that SUSE executives envision as the most important for giving their OS a competitive edge, and hint at the areas SUSE may focus on in the enterprise server market going forward.