Finally, Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) is set to penetrate deep into the Cloud Computing Enterprise segment post the Dell partnership. Canonical had first debuted the UEC along with their Jaunty Jackalope (9.04 Release) in April 2009.
The yesterday of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Computing
Mark Shuttleworth the founder of Ubuntu Linux had called cloud computing the ‘new hotness’ and forecasted that UEC would enable enterprises to build Amazon EC2-compatible cloud in their own datacenters. Simply put every enterprise could now configure their internal servers as a cloud allowing instant conversation with the same APIs as in the EC2 (the Linux distro for Amazon EC2 was released prior to UEC). Therefore, this technology allowed any web user to register and start a basic/minimal Server on Ubuntu.
Defining UEC role in cloud computing
Post October 2009, saw Ubuntu focus UEC for private cloud computing for two reasons. One competitors such as Red Hat Linux were already being partnered byAmazon with the main service line of assisting enterprises deploy their application through partners who offered cloud computing services. Two through the UEC, corporate IT managers could choose cloud computing for its innate capabilities of agility and elasticity and not be vulnerable to the Amazonian public infrastructure. The future for UEC was defined for private cloud computing.
The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud today
Canonical, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux saw the expansion of Ubuntu Linux and penetrating deep into the enterprise requirement for cloud computing allowing Dell to offer the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud on its PowerEdge C2100 as well as the PowerEdge C6100 servers. This also marks the migration of Ubuntu for DELL Desktops to DELL Servers.
Based on the open source Eucalyptus project, today the UEC has 12,000 active enterprise clouds being deployed and a growing curve of 200 users every day.
The Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud tomorrow
Dell will henceforth offer the UEC on two of its servers- PowerEdge C1200 as well as the PowerEdge C6100. Dell will handle the entire sell from reselling UEC Assists contracts but will receive an undisclosed sum as revenue per sale.
A question as to why Dell chose to partner Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud lead to the admission by Nicolas Barcet, the Product Manager at Ubuntu that the similar commitments of both organizations to offer simple yet stable deployment of methodologies of every kind. The simplicity of the methodology is further reflected in the reference architecture documentation as well as the per-configuration data files prepared for UEC.
The present challenges before UEC is that certification s are yet pending and so in the integration into other hardware system vendors such as IBM as well as HP. However, the power of UEC is in its flexibility for private cloud computing and possible scaling options to the public cloud usage. Additionally the economics of cloud computing show that infrastructural expenditure, facility of time, parallel unlimited access to the servers without the hassles of security risks makes it the technical toast for the past two decades.