Canonical, the founder of the Ubuntu project, has launched new professional services to help and support users building private clouds.
In an interview with eWEEK, Simon Wardley, head of cloud strategy at
Canonical, said the new services follow up on Canonical's preview
release of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud in April. The Ubuntu Enterprise
Cloud (UEC) uses an open source system known as Eucalyptus to enable
organizations to test, deploy and experiment with their own private,
in-house cloud that matches the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) API.
Eucalyptus is an open-source software infrastructure for
implementing cloud computing on an organization's own clusters.
Eucalyptus enables enterprises to create their own cloud computing
environment to maximize computing resources and provide a cloud
computing environment to their users.
Meanwhile, UEC is now a part of the open source Ubuntu Server
Edition technology stack. And by creating private clouds with the
technology, organizations can optimize server use and increase data
center efficiencies, while lowering costs and providing users with
self-service IT. Ubuntu is the first Linux distribution to provide such
a system and now Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services from Canonical help
businesses build these environments with optimal efficiency, Wardley
said.
"In April we launched the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud based on
Eucalyptus to enable our users to make private clouds; now we're
launching a number of services to build upon this," Wardley said. The
services include cloud assessment, deployment and management support,
he said.
“Enterprises are realizing that building 'private clouds' enables
them to better manage variable workloads, while reducing the waste of
idle servers," said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. "Building on
an open-source technology also avoids the issue of vendor lock-in.
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud enables businesses to do this - and the
addition of these services helps them to do it with confidence.”
Wardley said Canonical has teamed up with Eucalyptus to jointly
provide the cloud services but with a single interface for the customer
through the Canonical support team.
“While the IT industry talks of future strategies and releases vapor
ware, UEC today allows businesses to deploy and now support a 'private
cloud' on open standards from a renowned Linux provider,” said Woody
Rollins, CEO of Eucalyptus, in a statement. “We are very excited to
lend our expertise to building the type of professional services that
will help more businesses discover the benefits of private clouds built
on open technologies.”
Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services enable users to scale up from a
five-machine environment all the way to a site license covering all
machines, physical and virtual, in a single location.
"We'll help you assess your environment to help you deploy a private
cloud," Wardley said. "And we'll help you with the transition from
public cloud to private cloud." In addition, Canonical will help
enterprises with proof-of-concept activities and also support for their
cloud environments.
To use Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, you must first install Ubuntu 9.04
Server Edition. You can download Ubuntu Server Edition at no charge
from www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download-server.
To find out more about Ubuntu Cloud Computing, go here.
Cloud Computing 
