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 Channel Futures

Open Source


Coming Soon: Landscape Dedicated Server for Ubuntu

  • Written by Joe Panettieri 1
  • August 7, 2009

Canonical is diversifying how it delivers Landscape — a remote management tool for Ubuntu servers, desktops and mobile devices. The forthcoming Canonical moves have clear implications for Ubuntu customers, resellers and managed service providers. Here’s some analysis.

Until now, Landscape was only available through a hosted/SaaS (software as a service) configuration. But in September 2009, Canonical plans to launch Landscape Dedicated Server — which customers will be able to install and run on their local networks.

According to a prepared statement from Canonical:

Landscape Dedicated Server will give customers the flexibility to download package updates from their own private repository or the Ubuntu public package repository.

Longer term, Canonical is working on a Landscape configuration that service providers (ISPs, MSPs, VARs, etc.) can leverage to remotely manage their customer networks, according to Ken Drachnick, Landscape manager at Canonical. It sounds like the potential Landscape service provider edition will debut sometime in 2010.

What It Does

In the meantime, Canonical says Landscape Dedicated Server will:

  • install in a customer’s data center and provide all of the package management, auditing and monitoring capability of the hosted service for both physical and cloud-based Ubuntu instances.
  • be able to be configured to manage systems on a network with limited or no access to the public Internet. All system configuration, policies, and profiles are stored locally on the internal infrastructure.
  • provide users with a web interface on which all machines are registered. From this single interface, packages and security updates are deployed to the entire network of servers and/or desktops with a single click.

Canonical says Landscape Dedicated Server will cost $150 per node — plus server, installation and support fees (though I’m not sure what those fees involve). In contrast, Landscape Hosted Service (SaaS) costs $150 per node per year.

Three Reasons to Believe

Canonical’s decision to deliver Landscape as a hosted or on-premise solution is a smart one. The reasons:

  1. Not everyone trusts the cloud; many customers continue to prefer on-premise options that they can lock away in their own data centers.
  2. Emerging markets often have weak or intermittent broadband connections — limiting the potential use of Landscape Hosted Edition. Landscape Dedicated Server circumvents those broadband issues.
  3. Canonical’s long-term Landscape strategy increasingly includes service providers and channel partners, reflecting the fact that Ubuntu’s best chance for mass corporate adoption involves partners.

Still, Landscape remains an Ubuntu-only management tool, which could limit the software’s appeal in heterogeneous enterprises.

We’ll be in touch with Landscape Dedicated Server beta testers in the next few weeks to garner their feedback.

Follow WorksWithU via Identi.ca, Twitter and RSS (available now) and our newsletter (coming soon).

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

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11 comments

  1. Avatar Jef Spaleta August 7, 2009 @ 6:11 pm
    Reply

    Previous Internetnews articles has more pricing information:

    http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3833111

    “Drachnik said that list pricing is $8,000 for the Landscape Dedicated Server, with an annual subscription cost of $150 per node. He added that installation for small systems can be done remotely or on-site, and is roughly $2,000. In addition, a support contract on the systems running Landscape is required, which lists for $2,750 per system for enterprise 24 x 7 coverage.”

    Now that you know what all those other fees are…here’s the obligatory questions:

    Is this good value for money? Proprietary software…sitting on your hardware on your premises. Maybe its time to have the conversation about project Spacewalk and the community effort to enhance it to support debian packaging.

    Is there anyone here or in the U1000 who is already a paying Landscape customer who is interested in paying for this sort of thing?

    Anyone here not already a paying Landscape customer that is willing to go on record as making a pre-order for this?

  2. Avatar Simplicious August 7, 2009 @ 6:13 pm
    Reply

    What? Jef Spaleta hasn’t written his usual post questioning everything and everyone yet?

  3. Avatar Simplicious August 7, 2009 @ 6:13 pm
    Reply

    Actually, he did. Too fast for me.

  4. Avatar Joe Panettieri August 7, 2009 @ 6:36 pm
    Reply

    Jef: Question, are you paid to question every move Canonical makes?

    Canonical officially announced Landscape Dedicated Server on Aug. 4. We blog about it on Aug. 7. And within minutes of our blog post you submitted a comment asking if there are readers who are willing to discuss their pre-order plans for Landscape Dedicated Server.

    That seems a bit extreme, since so many readers are only now learning about Landscape Dedicated Server. Enterprise products like this aren’t pre-ordered with a click of a button within minutes/days of an announcement. They are thoroughly investigated first.

    To the best of my knowledge, only a few organizations are beta testing Landscape Dedicated Server. As testers and deployments begin we will be sure to interview the users. Are they willing to pay for Landscape Dedicated Server? Why or why not? We’ll find the answers once beta testers have given it a real try.

    In the meantime, challenging WorksWithU readers to disclose their pre-order buying plans for Landscape Dedicated Server sounds like an attempt to dismiss the product before it even gets out the door.

    Full disclosure on my part: I’ve been an editor for 20 years. And yes, Canonical now sponsors this site. But we work very hard to keep all posts balanced — pointing out where Canonical is heading, where weak points remain etc.

    Now it’s your turn. Are you compensated to question every move Canonical makes? Or is there some other motivation for your comments?

    Joe Panettieri
    Editorial Director
    WorksWithU

  5. Avatar Jef Spaleta August 7, 2009 @ 7:21 pm
    Reply

    Joe:
    This was on lwn more than a day ago..and internetnews before that. It’s not my fault you are covering it late..and with less factual information than what internetnews presented in terms of the costs involved.

    No, I am not compensated to question Canonical. But I’ve no way for you to verify that as I am not going to give you access to my personal financial statements. You have to implicitly trust that I will answer that question truthfully. And if you don’t already trust me then there was no point asking that question. So thanks for showing the trust.

    You’ll also have to trust me when I say that my ultimate motivation is transparency and accuracy. If Landscape is a popular value-add service..I want to see customers on record saying that. I have grave concerns about the sustainability of the corporate/community model Canonical has setup. The financial situation associated with Canonical is completely opaque and yet critical to the long term sustainability of the Ubuntu community. By their own count, Canonical admits there are only like 150 people with commit rights to work on Ubuntu packages and apply patches. That’s an incredibly small technical contributor base given the estimated size of the user base. If Canonical takes a lot of missteps in terms of business decisions there’s not a lot of community technical expertise to take up the slack if Canonical has to reorient manpower around poor business execution in any area.

    If Canonical doesn’t want to talk about landscape adoption, then I’m going to continue attempt to find customers who will. And for the record I’ve seen exactly 1 person admit to paying for landscape service contract to date. Would you regard Landscape as a sound business offering if the odds of an Ubuntu user contracting for its services being less than me being hit by lightening?

    -jef

  6. Avatar Joe Panettieri August 7, 2009 @ 8:40 pm
    Reply

    Jef: Thanks for taking the time to more fully explain your perspectives.

    Although I may not agree with your views (from time to time), I do appreciate you looping back with me and our readers. And it’s clear that we both see value in healthy debate and ongoing dialog.

    No doubt, the initial Landscape had a small installed base of paying customers. I wish I could give you firm numbers but I really don’t have a good feel for the early deployments. I hope to become far more familiar with Landscape’s installed base (and paying customers) as the dedicated server rolls out.

  7. Avatar Canonical Adjusts Ubuntu Management Strategy laquo; Unixster August 8, 2009 @ 1:05 pm
    Reply

    […] moves have clear implications for Ubuntu customers, resellers and managed service providers. Here’s some analysis. No tags for this […]

  8. Avatar Links 09/08/2009: DebConf9 Coverage, Firefox 3.6 Alpha | Boy August 9, 2009 @ 5:38 am
    Reply

    […] Coming Soon: Landscape Dedicated Server for Ubuntu Longer term, Canonical is working on a Landscape configuration that service providers (ISPs, MSPs, VARs, etc.) can leverage to remotely manage their customer networks, according to Ken Drachnick, Landscape manager at Canonical. It sounds like the potential Landscape service provider edition will debut sometime in 2010. […]

  9. Avatar JP August 9, 2009 @ 2:15 pm
    Reply

    Jef – wow, had no idea Ubuntu had so many with commit rights to Ubuntu. Especially considering that Fedora has what, maybe eight (8) total? Seeing as I have to give Fedora information to even see the contributor list, I cannot tell for sure. Talk about transparency.

    And as for spacewalk, how long did it take Red Hat to open Satellite server? Wow…something along the lines of 6 years or so? And where is the value there? It is a pain to setup and I have to use NON-GPL code to run it. Yea, it still requires Oracle although now I don’t have to pay for a license as I use to have to do.

    For your information, Mr. Spaleta, I will go on record to say that it is none of YOUR business.

    Now if you put “your money where your fingers are” and be transparent about your dealings, financial information and everything YOU ask about Canonical, you may be able to gain some miniscule amount of credibility. Right now, you are simply wasting time and space with your questions and your rhetoric shows that Ubuntu is a credible threat to your existence in some form or fashion.

  10. Avatar Jef Spaleta August 9, 2009 @ 7:21 pm
    Reply

    JP:

    Fedora has several hundred people with commit rights. The packager group in the Fedora account system currently lists 884 accounts. With the help of the python-fedora modules
    ( https://fedorahosted.org/python-fedora/ ) you can interact with the Fedora account system and the Fedora packagedb system you can get more fine-grained information.

    For example.. just looking at the ‘devel’ branch I see:
    Total Maintainers (package owner or co-maintainer) : 763
    Total Packages with a Maintainer listed as owner/comaint: 8639

    Every account listed a package owner or co-maintainer has cvs commit rights for that package. 763 individuals are have cvs commit rights and are actively helping to maintain 8639 srpms.

    If you want the python script that I used to produce those numbers I’ll gladly post it. Sadly this article forum doesn’t let me attach code.

    So those 763 people have commit rights, and are listed as package maintainers. Do they all use those rights on a regular basis? To know that you’d need to delve into the Fedora mailinglist dedicated to archiving all the packaging commit transactions. A very detailed accounting of the commit activity you could use the archives from this list:
    https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-commits/

    I haven’t found the time to datamine that mailinglist yet.

    Beyond the python module codebase and the publicly archived commit log mailinglist… if you have any further ideas on ways to add transparency to the Fedora packaging process…feel free to give me suggestions.

    -jef

  11. Avatar Bombar Embraces Ubuntu for Remote IT Support | Hallow Demon November 3, 2009 @ 3:31 am
    Reply

    […] cloud option — known as EUC (Enterprise Ubuntu Cloud). Plus, Canonical continues to polish Landscape, a remote management and administration tool for Ubuntu desktops and servers. Follow WorksWithU via […]

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