Ubuntu: Canonical Focuses on Wall Street
Call it a small but strategic step in the right direction. Following in the footsteps of Red Hat and Novell, the folks at Canonical are positioning Ubuntu for use by Wall Street firms. Some details about the effort could surface on April 19, during the HPC (High Performance Computing) Linux Financial Markets conference in New York. Here are some details.
Canonical won’t take center stage at the conference. But the software company does plan to exhibit Ubuntu at the show.
Smart move. Wall Street has been especially good to the Linux movement. In recent years, many financial services firms made the leap of faith from Sun’s SPARC/Solaris combo to Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Novell SUSE Linux in order to gain low-cost application freedom on industry standard hardware.
Now, Canonical hopes to begin the discussion with Wall Street firms as well. True believers include Equitec, a financial services firm that moved its proprietary trading software from 100 Windows-based servers to 30 Ubuntu-based servers, according to Canonical. (Side note: I’m having difficulty getting an update from Equitec regarding the Ubuntu deployment as well as the company’s business status.) Somewhat similarly, Linux Box — a solutions provider in Ann Arbor, Michigan — has started promoting Ubuntu to financial services firms.
Meanwhile, Dell has announced plans to embrace Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud — which could position Canonical for some private cloud momentum on Wall Street.
Admittedly, those are small signs of progress within Canonical’s broader Ubuntu business strategy. As Ubuntu 10.04 nears release in late April 2010, Canonical hopes to engage more ISVs (independent software vendors), cloud partners, OEMs and customers with the operating system. We’ll be watching to see how those strategies play out.
This does look encouraging. Even if it isn’t a huge leap, it’ll help. I think it could turn out to be a bigger help than some might currently think.
Eli: Thanks for your thoughts. I do want to make sure WorksWithU keeps this “news” item in perspective. It’s a small step for Canonical to show up at a financial services conference. But I think it’s significant, nonetheless, especially when Ubuntu is better known as a general PC desktop OS…
-jp
I work in Wall Street. Money is not an issue for the firms at the street, but name recognition is really important. Which is why as far as I heard they tend to choose Red Hat. I think it will be simpler for Ubuntu to sell workstations/thin clients for a Windows/Linux cost effective mix (wall street uses excel and oulook, you may replace the latter but not the former, not any time soon 🙁 )
Addendum: my place (one of the 5 top banks) is standardizing on RedHat (there were some SUSE servers besides RedHat).
Leo:
Is it just name recognition? Or do certifications like CAPP and EAL matter in your deployment scenario where RHEL is going?
-jef
@Jef: Good question: I’ll try to find out from one of our technology people.
@Joe: I’ll probably stop by at the conference on Monday, around lunch time.
Leo: I think your story is a familiar one. Red Hat’s close relationships with IBM, Dell and HP has certainly helped RHEL to gain momentum on Wall Street. Novell on IBM mainframes has also been popular in financial services and insurance, I hear.
Canonical is just getting started. Lots of work to do. But every journey begins with a single step…
I apologize but I won’t be at the conference; I’m scheduled to attend a managed services event in Miami that week.
-jp
Thanks Joe, for letting me know, hope you enjoy sunny Miami :). I’ll try to chat with the Ubuntu folks and give them some (hopefully useful) feedback.
I think Canonical is getting there, but its early days. Get the Ubuntu name known is the first, get people talking about it, exposure. As well as Ubuntu, all of Linux can only benefit.