Canonical, IBM: Expanded Ubuntu DB2 Cloud Partnership Coming
Canonical’s Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) sounds like its set to get a boost from IBM. A source attending HostingCon says a deeper relationship between IBM and Canonical could be announced as soon as July 20. And the relationship, which may surface at OSCON, could give Ubuntu and IBM’s DB2 database a lift in the cloud. Here’s why.
As you may recall, Canonical has been working since mid-2009 to build ISV support for the Ubuntu 10.04 launch in April 2010. Eager partners have included Alfresco and GroundWork Open Source.
Next up, Canonical appears poised to strengthen its existing IBM relationship. A source close to Canonical says a new appliance — designed around Ubuntu and IBM’s DB2 database — could surface this week at OSCON, the Open Source Convention. It sounds like the DB2 appliance will be designed to run on Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud and/or in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). I’m double-checking that chatter with Canonical.
Canonical has resold DB2 Express since around February 2008. IBM also has a vitualized desktop relationship with Canonical, involving Ubuntu and Virtual Bridges.
It’s always good to see Canonical rallying ISVs around Ubuntu. But it’s important to keep the news in context. Within the database market, IBM’s DB2 is most popular on mainframes. But I believe DB2’s market share widely trails Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server on traditional Windows and Linux servers.
Still, a stronger Ubuntu-DB2 relationship is a noteworthy step involving a big partner for Canonical. And it never hurts to have IBM on your side.
Interesting… considering that IBM already provides AMIs for DB express and DB workgroup based on Suse enterprise as well as a number of other AMIs based on SLED in EC2. There’s no reason that similar Suse based images couldn’t be made available via Canonical’s UEC image storefront. Are you suggesting that IBM is going to move from SLED and rebase its virtual images on Ubuntu? That would be surprising.
You also brought up the nearly 2 year old virtual bridges bundle press release. Have you ever seen anyone make any comment about the rate of adoption of the bundle? Virtual bridges itself supports more than Ubuntu now. Also its important to note that Virtual bridges does not offer Canonical support priced into its licensing (that was strictly a feature of the IBM bundle). I know.. I’ve communicated with virtual bridges sales in the last year. And I can’t find the original IBM offered bundle that includes the Canonical support priced in on IBM’s website any longer. So is this an active revenue generating bundle for Canonical or what? That press release was from 2008…and I’ve never seen anyone from Canonical or IBM talk about the adoption of this support bundle. Who is deploying Virtual Bridges with Ubuntu clients and are they paying Canonical for support? Obviously the people deploying Virtual bridges’s tech with RHEL or SLED clients are paying Red Hat/Novell.
Press releases from 2008 are a funny thing. That db2 express availability in Ubuntu press release is another 2008 press release you linked to for instance. Are you sure that’s an active partnership? Are you sure that Canonical is still acting as a reseller on behalf of IBM? Can you find the referenced $3k+ support offering in the Canonical store that the press release speaks of? I can’t. Did you realize that Canonical only offered db2 express in its partner repository for the Hardy release.. and not in a single release since? It’s not even in Lucid’s partner repository. I think that speaks _volumes_ about how strong the partnership has been since that 2008 press release. You can try to hand wave about db2exc being only LTS relevant and brush aside the lack of release support after Hardy. But no Lucid support? Not a good sign. And the original support offering in the store is just not there. Hard to call them a reseller if they aren’t..selling anything related to db2.
Speaking of Canonical storefronts…What offerings are currently available in Canonical’s UEC store at the moment? Can you give me a full run down of what images are available via the UEC storefront other than standard Ubuntu image offerings? What 3rd party appliance images are there for purchase?
It’s also important to note that IBM has already announced that its own test and development cloud is based on RHEV. IBM…a Red Hat technology _customer_.
IBM has a history of backing multiple linux vendors…because its in their best interest to have competing vendors in the mix. But lets keep things in perspective. IBM keeps _attempting_ to get the ball rolling with Canonical as a partner but nothing really appears to be sticking long term. IBM’s backing of RHEV is a significant indication as where the revenue momentum really is in cloud tech. Its simply not enough for Canonical to continue to position Ubuntu as a mindshare building loss-leader in the cloud and to corner the market on zero-revenue generating linux deployments in the cloud. IBM clearly isn’t _buying_ what Canonical is selling. Is anyone?
Is Canonical making any money whatsoever from the partnerships they’ve embarked on with IBM? Or is IBM just leveraging the gratis nature of Ubuntu? Canonical can’t be _just_ a vehicle for technology distribution, they have to find a revenue somewhere.
-jef
“But I believe DB2’s market share widely trails Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server on traditional Windows and Linux servers.”
You are wrong. DB2 is also strong on Windows/Linux servers. By the way there is also Linux on mainframe hardware where we (our company) is running DB2.
[email protected]: I’ll give your thoughts a closer look and get back to you with thoughts later today.
[email protected]: I’m right. I don’t have the numbers in front of me. But I know for a fact that DB2 market share trails Oracle and SQL Server by a wide margin on Windows Servers and also by a healthy margin on Linux. I will try to dig up the research.
-jp
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