Emerging Vendors

November 04, 2009

Company: Canonical

Headquarters: London, U.K.

Technology Sector: Software

Key Product: Ubuntu Linux

Year Founded: 2004

Number of Channel Partners: 117, primarily in North America

Ideal Channel Partner: Enterprise-focused solution providers

Why You Should Care: Canonical has brought Linux to the mass market by way of its partnerships with major OEMs and via word of mouth within the Ubuntu Server user community.

The Lowdown: Canonical, the London-based company that oversees commercial development of the Ubuntu open-source operating system, sees itself as an instrumental force in bringing Linux to the mass market and beyond the boundaries of the data center.

Ubuntu 9.10

When Canonical started out in 2004, Linux was seen by many in the IT Industry as a powerful yet complex technology that was best wielded by seasoned professionals. Canonical began chipping away at this belief first on the desktop side, and its 2007 distribution agreement with Dell provided a major catalyst for Linux adoption, said Steve George, director of corporate services at Canonical.

"We saw that as a real opportunity for Ubuntu to break outside the traditional Linux area," said George. "Dell were certainly pioneers and took the first step in marketing Linux, and they did a lot of work to make sure Ubuntu works on their PCs."

Since then, Canonical has inked additional partnerships with Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Lenovo, and other OEMS.

In 2006, Linux had begun to reach a critical mass of industry acceptance on the server side, George said. "By that point, we discovered that Ubuntu Server was sufficiently well known among the Linux experts who'd been working with Ubuntu Desktop," he said.

Canonical works with a wide range of channel partners, including solution providers, consultants and integrators. According to George, Canonical's ideal partner is one whose primary business is building software solutions with customers and delivering them as managed solutions, and whose background includes experience in handling large integration projects.

"Our partners bring a massive amount of reach into local markets that we can't get to. We're a relatively small business, and they provide the services we cannot deliver to Ubuntu users," George said.

On October 26, Canonical released Ubuntu Desktop 9.10, which enables companies to build their own cloud computing environments on their own servers and hardware. As it has done with desktop and server Linux, Canonical aims to take a pioneering role in cloud computing, and this release is the first step in that direction, George said.

"There are lots of people who want to try out the cloud, but they can't do it on Amazon [Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2]. Our approach gives customers the advantages of a dynamic environment," he said.