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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Canonical's April 2009 Surprise: More Than Ubuntu 9.04

  • Written by Joe Panettieri 1
  • February 19, 2009

When Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) arrives in April 2009, Canonical plans to introduce a separate surprise as well -- a new version of Landscape (image courtesy of Canonical). Never heard of Landscape? That will change in April 2009. Here's why.

Canonical Ubuntu Landscape SaaS
When Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) arrives in April 2009, Canonical plans to introduce a separate surprise as well — a new version of Landscape (image courtesy of Canonical). Never heard of Landscape? That will change in April 2009. Here’s why.

Remember: Ubuntu isn’t just a desktop operating system. Canonical aspires to push Ubuntu onto servers and perhaps even into corporate data centers. A recent server relationship with Hewlett-Packard plus an Ubuntu Server Edition research report reinforce Canonical’s ambitions.

Painting A New Landscape

For Ubuntu to succeed on a range of corporate and mobile devices, it needs to be easily managed. Microsoft learned this lesson in the 1990s, and launched Systems Management Server (SMS) to assist Windows NT and Windows 95 deployments and management.

Similarly, Canonical offers Landscape, a SaaS platform and remote management tool that Canonical plans to more aggressively promote in 2009, starting with a significant upgrade in April.

Canonical’s Landscape Strategy

I traded email with Ken Drachnik, Canonical’s Business Manager for Landscape, to get a feel for where Landscape is heading. Here’s our conversation:

WorksWithU: How is Canonical positioning Landscape?

Drachnik: Landscape manages and monitors all your Ubuntu systems significantly reducing the complexity and cost of managing your Linux operating environments.  Offered as a Software as a Service (SaaS) by Canonical, Landscape is a complete solution that helps IT administrators maximize the performance, availability and compliance of their IT infrastructure.

WorksWithU: Is Landscape an open source product?

Drachnik: The Client for Landscape is open source and available on Launchpad under a GPL license. However,  Landscape is a paid for service from Canonical and the code is proprietary.  You might be asking this because Red Hat has recently open sourced their RH Network software as SpaceWalk. Since Red Hat follows  “procurement” model, you cannot get RH packages or updates without buying a subscription. So RH can provide their management code for free, because they charge customers for updates. Conversely, customers get very little value from Spacewalk unless they already have a subscription to RH.

Ubuntu follows an “acquisition” open source model in that Ubuntu AND updates are free. So we charge for a service to manage packages (essentially automating many of the tasks that sys admins do manually)  and provide monitoring for systems.  Anyone can get Ubuntu updates for free – this is central to our values – but we do ask them to pay for value added services like package management and monitoring, just like we charge for support and training.

WorksWithU: How does Canonical charge for landscape?

Drachnik: A subscription to Landscape is provided as part of a support contract from Canonical and is also available separately. Each machine under a support contract from Canonical receives a subscription to a Landscape account. Part of the benefit of Landscape is that users log their support cases through the service which simplifies troubleshooting of problems and aligns support communications with trouble tickets.

Separately, we also provide subscriptions to Landscape on a per client basis with discounts based on volume. Today, Landscape is offered as SaaS for desktops and servers connected to the internet.  It also works well with intermittently connected systems (such as laptops). The list price for a subscription to Landscape is $150/client.

WorksWithU: Do you foresee a day when Canonical VARs and channel partners will use Landscape to remotely manage/troubleshoot Ubuntu servers and desktops for their customers?

Drachnik: Absolutely. As users deploy Ubuntu on more systems, the more complex management becomes and the greater the need to manage packages.

Customers can directly contact Canonical and buy a subscription to the Landscape service separately or purchase a support contract which includes a subscription to Landscape.

However, many customers often get their Ubuntu systems from VARs so there is a good case for a business model for VARs to provide front-end management and support for their customers. In this case, the VAR registers their customers’ clients with the Landscape server and the VAR manages the updates and monitors their customers’ systems. Just like VARs often provide front-end support for their clients and contract with Canonical for back line support.

We have some additional business models around Landscape for VARs that we are exploring with a few select customers now and will have details about in the next few months.

WorksWithU: Any Landscape upgrades planned?

Drachnik: Yes. Landscape, like Ubuntu, is on a development path providing updates every 6 months. The next version of Landscape is 1.3 which is due out in April 2009 so look for a detailed announcement then. Landscape was released in March of 2008 and version 1.3 represents our 3rd major release of Landscape features.

This next release is focused on features to make managing 1000’s of systems simpler and more intuitive and Cloud environments. As the number of machines you mange scales to thousands of systems, the GUI that Landscape uses needs to be designed to allow system administrators to quickly understand which systems need updates and which systems need attention.

We will also be implementing features that will enable users of Ubuntu in the Amazon EC2 Cloud to manage and monitor their Ubuntu instances. Users will also have access to a new knowledge base packed with articles about how to better use and deploy Ubuntu very shortly. And we are planning on expanding our alert capabilities to include SMS in addition to email.

Online Resources

At the end of our email exchange, Drachnik offered  a few links to help readers find more Landscape information:

http://blog.landscape.canonical.com/

http://Canonical.com/projects/landscape

http://www.canonical.com/services/support

WorksWithU is updated multiple times per week. Don’t miss a single post. Sign up for our RSS and Twitter feeds (available now) and newsletter (coming in 2009).

Tags: Cloud Service Providers Digital Service Providers MSPs VARs/SIs Cloud Mobility Open Source

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13 comments

  1. Avatar Vadim P. February 19, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
    Reply

    Links at the bottom are broken 😉

    But this is definitely a move in the right direction. Would help Ubuntu deployment and help Canonical make -something-.

  2. Avatar Joe Panettieri February 19, 2009 @ 6:10 pm
    Reply

    Vadim: Links are all fixed. Thank you and sorry about that.
    -jp

  3. Avatar Dan February 20, 2009 @ 2:07 am
    Reply

    I could see this being very useful. Now if we could just get our management to move away from Access…

  4. Avatar Yves Van Belle February 20, 2009 @ 6:54 am
    Reply

    It would be nice if Canonical would release a version of Landscape for 1 or 2 clients so one could experiment and test this software.
    They could put in the license that the 1 or 2 client version can only be used for testing, not for commercial use.
    Anyway, this looks like a nice Management console.

  5. Avatar wilq February 20, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
    Reply

    I disagree with statement about SpaceWalk…

    1. if u run RHEL u use RHN… and u don’t care about SpiceWalk

    2. if u run CentOS and Fedora witch SpiceWalk u can enjoy central package management and more…

    Redhat is cooking (with FreeIPA) a truly free it infrastructure management package… Ubuntu is not… it’s just a fact not accusation cos I really like Ubu/Kubu and hope that in the future will try to provide open tools for it management… competition is always welcomed 😉

  6. Avatar Ty Miles February 20, 2009 @ 2:50 pm
    Reply

    SMS was very positive for MS. But Active Directory was a bigger deal then SMS.

    An easy to set up user management and filesharing solution like Windows AD and CIFS (Printserving) is what really took MS over the top.

    Remember (If you are as old as I am. LOL) when Banyan vines and Novell NDS were top dogs. They ran the networking world because they provided filesharing user management, print sharing and email based on the centralized user databases provided in their LDAP implementations.

    Now all those things that made Banyan and Novell great are now provided by AD. Yet there is no similar over all solution for Linux.

    And I am not talking about trying to copy Windows SBS. I am talking about trying to provide the same services out the box that Windows 2003 standard and enterprise offer.

  7. Avatar Joe Panettieri February 20, 2009 @ 2:53 pm
    Reply

    Ty: I used to attend ABUI (Association of Banyan Users Internation) meetings. But I was recent college graduate at the time… You bring up a great point. We will do some follow-up coverage regarding Active Directory and Ubuntu, etc. Thanks for the suggestion.

  8. Avatar Ty Miles February 20, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
    Reply

    Thank you Joe. I have always wished that Banyan had been open sourced. Street talk and Vines were great. And being that Banyan ran on Unix system 4 it could of been ported to Linux pretty easy.

    But after Allchin went to MS NOOOO one was getting their hands on Banyan.

    I even wish that Novell would make eDirectory more easy to install on other versions of Linux (Other then Suse) and that iFolder etc worked with that. eDirectory is pretty slick and has always been more robust then AD.

    But again thanks Joe for the follow up. I will be looking forward to more stories about the subject here on the site. 🙂

  9. Avatar Joe Panettieri February 20, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
    Reply

    Ty: You’re stirring up a lot of IT memories. I covered Vines, StreetTalk, Allchin, NT’s birth, Novell’s fall and all that stuff for InformationWeek (1992-1996).

    You are so correct: Novell directory service on Linux should have been a HUGE hit. I will check in with NOVL to see where eDirectory for SUSE and other OSes (Ubuntu?) is heading.

    Purely FYI: Our sister site, http://www.TheVARguy.com, covers all the commercial Linux flavors and partner strategies.

  10. Avatar Vadim P. February 20, 2009 @ 8:17 pm
    Reply

    You put a comma into the link and it doesn’t work.

  11. Avatar Thibauld February 22, 2009 @ 11:12 pm
    Reply

    This clearly goes in the right direction as online services have the potential to be a huge revenue stream for Canonical given they broad user base. While Landscape is clearly targeted to corporations, I hope they will provide online services (à la MobileMe?) for individuals too… this would be great!

  12. Avatar meeas February 23, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
    Reply

    I agree, this should be great for Ubuntu, and hopefully open some previously closed doors. However their short-sightedness is disheartening.

    “Conversely, customers get very little value from Spacewalk unless they already have a subscription to RH.”

    Guess the didn’t think about:
    – increased security from not having to open up firewall holes to the Internet
    – decreased bandwidth since all of your servers aren’t pulling updates across the ISP link
    – all the people using Fedora, CentOS, and most other RPM based distros that RedHat doesn’t support

    I think Ubuntu’s Landscape service is great, but I would like to have the option to run that service in-house, preferable in an open-source manner like the rest of the distro. I’m a firm believer that the availability of Landscape is going to draw the same number of paying customers whether its open source or proprietary, so why not provide a benefit to the MUCH MUCH larger community as a whole by open sourcing Landscape.

  13. Avatar Whoraquo; Who June 19, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
    Reply

    […] Via | http://www.workswithU.com […]

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