Ubuntu has been around for a while now and has been instrumental in making us mortals understand what Linux is all about. And now with the popularity of cloud computing reaching new heights, Canonical has now also officially deemed Ubuntu as “the cloud OS.” What needs to be seen is whether this is what actually "matters" to those who ultimately "matter" for Ubuntu? This is also important when we remember that Canonical’s been pushing Ubuntu’s cloud-centric features hard in recent months. Recently, Canonical released Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) on Dell servers, official support for the OpenStack cloud management infrastructure and the introduction by Autonomic Resources of a UEC-based product for federal agencies in the United States. So, a lot has been happening on cloud computing front from Ubuntu side.
First and foremost these developments highlight the growing confidence that stakeholders have in Ubuntu's ability to generate revenue and its future role as a vehicle of economic change in the market. Even as Ubuntu’s most dynamic source of popularity remains the desktop, where the distribution enjoys unparalleled popularity among users and on which Canonical continues to push innovations like the Unity interface, the actual sustainability of Ubuntu Linux is being increasingly seen as rooted in the server room and, especially, the cloud. The focus is now shifting where the marketing strategy focuses on Ubuntu Server Edition as an entity that provides the base on which custom-built, self-hosted cloud environments are forged. It means, in future, we are going to see more and more Ubuntu as infrastructure vendor for small, medium and start up cloud businesses worldwide in active support of Hardware providers such as DELL.
This makes Ubuntu perhaps the first concrete mainstream entity in the cloud computing domain with a level of clarity that the cloud totally lacked previously. So far, all that we have seen is a very ambiguous sketch of potential applications and benefits that emerge out of cloud environment and it all sounds very fascinating. But as one blogger has very aptly pointed out "it’s another thing to enunciate a clear conception of what the cloud actually means in practice, and how it can be useful for businesses beyond the relative confines of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)".
So, appreciation is all the more due for Canonical for being the first enterprise to take cloud computing seriously. They now have the tools developed and strategies prepared to move ahead in the previously uncharted waters and provide users with an opportunity to take advantage of the cloud in a smooth and understandable manner.
Ultimately, it is going to be the users who will decide upon the fate of this initiative. And it still is to be seen how far Ubuntu can go to meet its stated goals and honor its desired objectives. The market, however, now has a quantifiable benchmark to test the viability of cloud computing. And in my assessment, cloud computing is definitely the next level to go so very soon, we should expect several other competitors rushing in to fill the void. With the rise of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, we may see a day when in the words of a chief strategist at Canonical . That day may not be far but for now, even with this initiative, the world of cloud computing is still very young and needs to be nurtured very carefully.
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