Canonical Talks Ubuntu’s Cloud Prospects

These days, it’s hard to avoid rampant buzz of how cloud computing is going to change the enterprise data center permanently, and for the better. But away from the hype, it’s clear that cloud computing is in its early days, though it hasn’t stopped every major enterprise OS from making some sort of play for the space — ranging from Microsoft’s Windows Azure to IBM’s use of Red Hat’s cloud technology.

ServerWatch checks in with Canonical, the chief commercial force behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. With its own Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud technology, the open source project and its commercial backer have their own designs on the emerging market.

The cloud isn’t just a buzzword for Canonical. For the Ubuntu Linux vendor, the cloud is a technology that its users are actually deploying, and it’s got the numbers to prove it.

The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) has been available since the Jaunty Jackalope release in April 2009. UEC is now poised to be included for the first time in next week’s Long Term Support (LTS) release with Lucid, which could further improve Ubuntu’s cloud position.

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