6 ms·

If you go look at what companies are running in the cloud, and what companies are hosting their clouds on, Canonical and Ubuntu are the 800lb gorilla in the clo

by tealeg 12y ago

If you go look at what companies are running in the cloud, and what companies are hosting their clouds on, Canonical and Ubuntu are the 800lb gorilla in the cloud market. If you were talking naively about where Canonical should focus to make money you'd have to favour cloud tech over the desktop. It's not a simple as that though, those two facts aren't separate - Ubuntu got to be the platform of choice for the cloud not just by being their early and investing in it, but also by being a great choice for the people developing cloud tech in over companies. Ubuntu in the cloud is a success story already and both the Ubuntu Desktop and Server are integral to that.

Alupis 12y ago
I"m sorry but you are mistaken... if you look at server stats, majority of "the cloud" is RHEL/CentOS based. I'm not going to argue that there are not many people using Ubuntu for servers... but it's not the standard when you get to big deployments. (I think you are refering to Ubuntu being the default Linux choice on EC2 which certaintly helped it's popularity. However, EC2 is not even built from Ubuntu... it's RHEL/CentOS). But it doesn't really matter. Canonical is drifting from what could be great. The average user does not need tech support to use a modern linux desktop (have you tried recently? they have come a long long way even from 3 years ago). At a time when XP is EOL'ed, and people are looking for anything not Windows 8 -- Linux should be answering that call, but instead Canonical is waffling again. There is absolutely a void in the market. Let's not make this an argument. Time will tell, as does history. Canonical has fallen short on execution on almost every major project thus far. Maybe this one won't repeat history.
- sparkiegeek 12y ago
  Where are you getting the stats that majority of the cloud is RHEL/CentOS? Published stats [1] show that Ubuntu dominates cloud deployments. [1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1318 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1318
  - Alupis 12y ago
    Yes, of course Mark Shuttleworth's personal blog is not bias (he's the owner of Canonical). Also, he's talking about deployments on Digital Ocean, ie. VM's. I'm talking about what actually makes the "cloud", ie. the "cloud". The "cloud" is built out of RHEL/Centos for the most part. Almost all the major "cloud" infrastructures have been built with RHEL/Centos. We can speculate why... but Red Hat has built a $1 billion+ revenue per year company out of "cloud" and enterprise support contracts. (because they were there first, and they focused on it... and after it became profitable, then they finally branches out into other markets.) The problem with Canonical IMO is they try to get into too many markets which ends up resulting in split finite resources. "Jack of all trades, master of none".
    - SkyMarshal 12y ago
      Free Desktop OS is a loss leader, no way they'll make significant profit out of that. Better to make the best Free Linux desktop OS in the world, get lots of people using it, hopefully among them some engineers, influencers, and decision makers, then provide server/cloud products and services based on that same tech. For one single data point, that's exactly why I use Ubuntu server for all my cloud deployments - because I use Ubuntu desktop and know the Ubuntu/Debian ecosystem really well. Nothing wrong with that current business model, any problems are more a matter of execution and competing against - as you point out - heavily entrenched first movers. But focusing on desktop won't save them, especially since desktop is saturated and already peaked. Cloud and mobile is where the growth is now.
    - tribaal 12y ago
      At least HP's public cloud is based on Ubuntu as host: http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/public-cloud/1913/hp-picks-ubuntu-cloud-operating-system http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/public-cloud/1913... I'd be surprised if they were the only ones. DigitalOcean, Amazon, Microsoft(!) all list Ubuntu as the most popular VM for linux servers. Can you point to stats or facts about RHEL deployments backing your point of view? I'm genuinely curious.
- tealeg 12y ago
  I won't make it an argument, but I'll share what I know and see if you see things differently. You probably won't, but I'm inclined to say it anyway :-) First, to clear some things up, I'll avoid conflating traditional enterprise servers and hosted servers with the on-demand, pay-as-you-use cloud model. The later is what I mean by "Cloud", not just hosted servers. To my knowledge Red Hat only holds a lead in server OS installations with paid support, and that's almost all in the former model (non-cloud, for me). Incidentally that's also the stat you'll see when companies publish reports about Linux's market share in general - they often just look at who's buying Linux. It's hard to get a real picture of what people actually use when you include unpaid Linux usage (which is most Linux usage), but the best data I know of is created by scanning web hosts, and suggest that Linux server run in order Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS and RedHat: http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all Red Hat's sudden obsession with OpenStack in the last 12 months, the move to take over CentOS and the purchase of InkTank are reflections that Red Hat are struggling to get in that game and are prepared to spend big to do so. Why are they struggling so hard? Because they're frightened. The steady, "we want everything to stay the same for 10 years" model they've been serving so well is seriously threatened and they need to be in the new market to continue their success. Businesses love the idea of the cloud (if not yet the reality). Read what companies say about the cloud - they'll talk about it in terms of flexibility, and opportunity, but what they really love is that it means that you can offload the genuinely generic work of IT infrastructure management. This reduces the reliance on staff and consultancy costs, which are the most expensive aspect of corporate IT (hint, want to stay employed, get with the program, fast!). It also means that whether you're using Red Hat or Ubuntu, you get to negotiate the fee for OS level support via a behemoth like HP, Amazon, Microsoft or Google, or if you're a huge company with a private cloud, you centralise all that and do it in bulk. The same goes for the physical space for hosting. Now Amazon were an existing Red Hat customer and so their servers were already running that when they started on this public cloud adventure - which afterall was a clever way to reuse their existing investment in infrastructure and personnel outside peak load time. That's not a big win for Red Hat, but there's growth of their existing business for sure (who knows what kind of deal Amazon got from them?). Still, the utilisation of that cloud is the bigger chunk of new business there, and it's Ubuntu winning the majority of it. Now spread out to the nascent cloud market as a whole, sure Amazon are a huge public cloud with the bulk of utilisation, but there are many others, new ones all the time. Additionally and many, many private clouds that are being created those are the opportunities for new revenue in the hosting market. Almost all of them are going with OpenStack and 55% of OpenStack deployments are Ubuntu right now (I've seen Red Hat running at less than 1/10th of that business. I'd expect Red Hat to increase that number a lot in the next couple of years (they'll convert some existing customers for sure), but don't be fooled by the recent, aggressive press releases from Red Hat - they're fighting to get a foothold in this market, not controlling it by any means.

by tealeg 12y ago

Alupis 12y ago

I"m sorry but you are mistaken... if you look at server stats, majority of "the cloud" is RHEL/CentOS based. I'm not going to argue that there are not many people using Ubuntu for servers... but it's not the standard when you get to big deployments. (I think you are refering to Ubuntu being the default Linux choice on EC2 which certaintly helped it's popularity. However, EC2 is not even built from Ubuntu... it's RHEL/CentOS). But it doesn't really matter. Canonical is drifting from what could be great. The average user does not need tech support to use a modern linux desktop (have you tried recently? they have come a long long way even from 3 years ago). At a time when XP is EOL'ed, and people are looking for anything not Windows 8 -- Linux should be answering that call, but instead Canonical is waffling again. There is absolutely a void in the market. Let's not make this an argument. Time will tell, as does history. Canonical has fallen short on execution on almost every major project thus far. Maybe this one won't repeat history.

sparkiegeek 12y ago
Where are you getting the stats that majority of the cloud is RHEL/CentOS? Published stats [1] show that Ubuntu dominates cloud deployments. [1] http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1318 http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/1318
- Alupis 12y ago
  Yes, of course Mark Shuttleworth's personal blog is not bias (he's the owner of Canonical). Also, he's talking about deployments on Digital Ocean, ie. VM's. I'm talking about what actually makes the "cloud", ie. the "cloud". The "cloud" is built out of RHEL/Centos for the most part. Almost all the major "cloud" infrastructures have been built with RHEL/Centos. We can speculate why... but Red Hat has built a $1 billion+ revenue per year company out of "cloud" and enterprise support contracts. (because they were there first, and they focused on it... and after it became profitable, then they finally branches out into other markets.) The problem with Canonical IMO is they try to get into too many markets which ends up resulting in split finite resources. "Jack of all trades, master of none".
  - SkyMarshal 12y ago
    Free Desktop OS is a loss leader, no way they'll make significant profit out of that. Better to make the best Free Linux desktop OS in the world, get lots of people using it, hopefully among them some engineers, influencers, and decision makers, then provide server/cloud products and services based on that same tech. For one single data point, that's exactly why I use Ubuntu server for all my cloud deployments - because I use Ubuntu desktop and know the Ubuntu/Debian ecosystem really well. Nothing wrong with that current business model, any problems are more a matter of execution and competing against - as you point out - heavily entrenched first movers. But focusing on desktop won't save them, especially since desktop is saturated and already peaked. Cloud and mobile is where the growth is now.
  - tribaal 12y ago
    At least HP's public cloud is based on Ubuntu as host: http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/public-cloud/1913/hp-picks-ubuntu-cloud-operating-system http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/cloud-essentials/public-cloud/1913... I'd be surprised if they were the only ones. DigitalOcean, Amazon, Microsoft(!) all list Ubuntu as the most popular VM for linux servers. Can you point to stats or facts about RHEL deployments backing your point of view? I'm genuinely curious.
tealeg 12y ago
I won't make it an argument, but I'll share what I know and see if you see things differently. You probably won't, but I'm inclined to say it anyway :-) First, to clear some things up, I'll avoid conflating traditional enterprise servers and hosted servers with the on-demand, pay-as-you-use cloud model. The later is what I mean by "Cloud", not just hosted servers. To my knowledge Red Hat only holds a lead in server OS installations with paid support, and that's almost all in the former model (non-cloud, for me). Incidentally that's also the stat you'll see when companies publish reports about Linux's market share in general - they often just look at who's buying Linux. It's hard to get a real picture of what people actually use when you include unpaid Linux usage (which is most Linux usage), but the best data I know of is created by scanning web hosts, and suggest that Linux server run in order Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS and RedHat: http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/os-linux/all/all Red Hat's sudden obsession with OpenStack in the last 12 months, the move to take over CentOS and the purchase of InkTank are reflections that Red Hat are struggling to get in that game and are prepared to spend big to do so. Why are they struggling so hard? Because they're frightened. The steady, "we want everything to stay the same for 10 years" model they've been serving so well is seriously threatened and they need to be in the new market to continue their success. Businesses love the idea of the cloud (if not yet the reality). Read what companies say about the cloud - they'll talk about it in terms of flexibility, and opportunity, but what they really love is that it means that you can offload the genuinely generic work of IT infrastructure management. This reduces the reliance on staff and consultancy costs, which are the most expensive aspect of corporate IT (hint, want to stay employed, get with the program, fast!). It also means that whether you're using Red Hat or Ubuntu, you get to negotiate the fee for OS level support via a behemoth like HP, Amazon, Microsoft or Google, or if you're a huge company with a private cloud, you centralise all that and do it in bulk. The same goes for the physical space for hosting. Now Amazon were an existing Red Hat customer and so their servers were already running that when they started on this public cloud adventure - which afterall was a clever way to reuse their existing investment in infrastructure and personnel outside peak load time. That's not a big win for Red Hat, but there's growth of their existing business for sure (who knows what kind of deal Amazon got from them?). Still, the utilisation of that cloud is the bigger chunk of new business there, and it's Ubuntu winning the majority of it. Now spread out to the nascent cloud market as a whole, sure Amazon are a huge public cloud with the bulk of utilisation, but there are many others, new ones all the time. Additionally and many, many private clouds that are being created those are the opportunities for new revenue in the hosting market. Almost all of them are going with OpenStack and 55% of OpenStack deployments are Ubuntu right now (I've seen Red Hat running at less than 1/10th of that business. I'd expect Red Hat to increase that number a lot in the next couple of years (they'll convert some existing customers for sure), but don't be fooled by the recent, aggressive press releases from Red Hat - they're fighting to get a foothold in this market, not controlling it by any means.