Canonical Sharpens Focus on Red Hat, VMware; IPO Plans Remain

Canonical this week moved to simplify its service offerings in an attempt to lower cost and attract more customers looking to jump into the open source game. The move also comes ahead of a planned initial public offering that could handsomely compensate the company’s staff. The move is under its Ubuntu Advantage (UA) for Infrastructure program that consolidates enterprise security, compliance, and support for up to 10 years. It consolidates that support for Linux, Kubernetes, Docker, OpenStack, KVM, Ceph, and Swift. Ubuntu is Canonical’s distribution system for Linux, designed to run on computing devices, network servers, and in the cloud. It includes an OpenStack version and a Kubernetes option. It also is the basis for most public cloud instances including Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Oracle Cloud. The UA for Infrastructure platform offers three levels of support. The basic is the “Essential” level that provides for kernel live patches, security fixes, and infrastructure management. It also covers regulatory compliance for Linux and infrastructure components, including base Docker images.