Canonical: Ubuntu Server Software Blitz At LinuxWorld
Canonical is preparing an Ubuntu Server blitz at LinuxWorld Expo in August. Alfresco, IBM, Openbravo, Zimbra and others are expected to rally around Ubuntu Server at the conference, The VAR Guy learned during meetings at OSCON. Here’s the scoop, and the implications for Ubuntu partners.
Canonical knows it Ubuntu Server’s success hinges on broad ISV (independent software vendor) support and a strong channel of integrators and solutions providers. The company will attempt to address both of those major realities at LinuxWorld. Plus, there are strong indications that Canonical will expand its online software store as part of the Ubuntu Server push.
ISVs Backing Ubuntu Server
For starters, Canonical will communicate that Ubuntu Server is more than a file server and Web server. The following open source application providers are expected to endorse Ubuntu Server at LinuxWorld:
- Alfresco: The open source content management system is wildly popular on Ubuntu. But Alfresco will more directly target the Ubuntu Server market place, starting at LinuxWorld.
- IBM: It sounds like IBM is confirmed to participate in the Ubuntu Server push at LinuxWorld, but The VAR Guy is still digging for details about Big Blue’s potential involvement. The IBM DB2 and Lotus desktop teams already support Ubuntu. But so far, it sounds like IBM’s Lotus server and Websphere teams are taking a “wait and see” approach to Ubuntu server.
- Openbravo: The company specializes in ERP (enterprise resource planning) and POS (point of sale) software, giving Ubuntu Server a lift in fast-growing market segments.
- Zimbra: The open source email provider is now owned by Yahoo. And Zimbra has a fanatical following.
- Several more Ubuntu Server ISVs are expected to be announced at LinuxWorld.
Canonical Online Software Store
Canonical’s online software store already offers versions of Parallels Workstation and IBM DB2 Express. But Canonical has been keeping a close eye on another online software store — Red Hat Exchange (RHX).
Will Canonical go head-to-head against RHX? Perhaps not. But there are strong indications that Canonical will expand its online store to offer third-party applications like Alfresco and Zimbra, among others.
Where’s the Canonical Reseller Channel?
Meanwhile, Canonical is taking a close look at its reseller channel for Ubuntu Server.
“To build a channel, you need to bring business to your channel. We have not done a good job of that so far,” conceded Gerry Carr, a Canonical marketing manager. “We have to do a better job showing opportunities to our partners. Over next year, we’ll bring the opportunity to the channel. We’re not interested in getting in the deployment business. That’s an opportunity for our partners.”
How will Canonical bolster its IT channel? One way to attract resellers is through ISVs. For instance: Once Zimbra jumps on the Ubuntu Server bandwagon at LinuxWorld, it’s natural to expect some Zimbra solutions providers to embrace Canonical’s partner program.
Also, Canonical’s online store could become an ideal place for Canonical to funnel project leads to integrators and solutions providers that specialize in specific applications.
Zimbra could do some “rallying around Ubuntu” by actually supporting the current LTS release rather than the now ancient 6.06 LTS version.
For all practical purposes, Zimbra must be considered proprietary software that sits on top of a free software platform. Perhaps the “free platform” can be considered to be Linux plus the components like MySQL and Cyrus that they helped themselves to. If you want Zimbra to do anything useful, the free version is crippled — they want you to spend megabucks with them, at which point you might as well be running Exchange.
Email and groupware is such a fundamental part of the computing infrastructure that it simply must be done with end-to-end free software, lest we find ourselves locked in again. As such, the preferred solutions are 100% Pure GPL systems such as Citadel [http://www.citadel.org] and Kolab [http://www.kolab.org]. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that Zimbra is open source simply because they say it is.
Ignatius:
I haven’t tried Zimbra so I can’t speak about how crippled the open source version is. Here is their comparison of editions:
http://www.zimbra.com/products/product_editions.html
What other solutions do you like? What about Open-Xchange?
http://www.open-xchange.com/
Thanks,
Tristan
IGnatius T Foobar is promoting the Citadel and Kolab servers as better alternatives for Zimbra. Although he is right about Zimbra being a somewhat crippled, proprietary piece of software, he should also be aware of the major shortcomings of Citadel and Kolab.
As for Citadel, just try out their webinterface (WebCit) and compare that with Zimbra’s. You will see immediately why Citadel is going nowhere.
As for Kolab, with the Horde web-interface they have an OK web solution. However, the lack of a decent, free (windows) client is eating me. (no, Outlook does not count here.. and I DO know that there is a port of Kontact coming our way, but it is not here, yet..)
Proper CalDav support would help as well, as you then could use a standard client like Thunderbird/Lightning.
Another possibility for Thunderbird (and for other clients) would be if the Kolab-guys could talk to the other developers so that they could make their clients understand the Kolab XML format and just show the calendar view instead of this message that you need a Kolab XML client when you view the standard IMAP-folders from the email-client. I am not a programmer, but I can hardly imagine that it would be so difficult to implement…? The current solution through SyncKolab is not a good solution because you still see the calendar folders with their raw xml-messages instead of a calendar view. Which can be confusing for many of my fellow Doe’s..
And then for dessert. If Citadel and Kolab came with an easy way to incorporate and administrate Samba from their administrative interfaces as well, this would certainly have an impact. Yeah, I know thera are hacks and ways to do this, but they are too cumbersome for most people.
If Citadel is good but has a bad web interface, Kolab has a decent web interface but doesn’t work well, and both are open source…
couldn’t someone put them together?
Citadel does not have a “bad web interface” and is far from “going nowhere.” John Doe is expecting an Exchange alternative to be a feature-for-feature clone of Exchange, which is *not* what Citadel attempts to do. Citadel takes a unique user-focused approach to collaboration, which thousands of delighted system administrators and millions of happy users are now finding that they can’t live without once they’ve tried it.
If you want the feature set of Exchange, then you probably should be running Exchange.
The citadel devs are working on a few things that will bring it to the masses. I can’t live without greylisting and for whatever reason, the rbls’ don’t seem to work. I may try it again in the near future with postfix in front of it. They could also make it easier to “skin” which would let those who think the interface is ugly – which it kinda is -make it as pretty as they like. It was pretty easy to set up, however the spam coming in made it unusable for me. I never did get kolab to work so I can’t comment on it much. I would like to see the roundcube guys get with the citadel guys.
Citadel has the ability to plug in to a third party MTA, so if you want to for example use Postfix for transport, Citadel will happily sit behind it as the MDA and then you can use postgrey or whatever other plugins you want.
Citadel’s web UI is also skinnable, so you can definitely change the color scheme or whatever. It’s also been freshened up a bit in the almost four years since this last batch of comments was posted, so give it another look 🙂