Oxymoron of the day: Journalistic Integrity
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Ubuntu goes head-to-head with Red Hat and Windows in businesses
LINUX VENDOR Canonical is going head-to-head with Microsoft and Red Hat in the enterprise market with its Ubuntu Linux distribution.
Canonical has been developing Ubuntu for the best part of six years now to become arguably the most popular consumer oriented Linux distribution. Now Canonical has set its sights on the higher end enterprise datacentre market by partnering with companies to flog Ubuntu Advantage, a support agreement for big businesses.
Red Hat has shown that Linux vendors can make a lot of cash by selling support for desktops and servers running Linux-based operating systems, and now Canonical wants a part of its billion dollar business. When asked who is Canonical's main competitor in this business, Paul Holt, VP of corporate services at Canonical told The INQUIRER, "Canonical's business and offerings are broad, covering cloud, server, desktop, big data, etc., so we compete with different organisations operating in those spaces. Microsoft and Redhat are key players in these markets."
A few months ago Canonical's marketing manager Gerry Carr told The INQUIRER that he "does not mind if people choose other [Linux] distributions" as long as it isn't Microsoft's Windows". Now that Canonical is entering competition against Red Hat, Suse and Microsoft in the enterprise market, the gloves should be well and truly off.
Providing support for software is absolutely vital if Canonical is to gain acceptance in the enterprise market and, according to Holt, widespread Ubuntu deployment in firms is dependant on the customer having easy access to support. "Ubuntu has been adopted by enterprises for years and the partner programme marks a recognition of the growing number of large organisations that are using Ubuntu for desktop, cloud and server installations and that are looking for more robust support and tools to manage their environments. The number of opportunities to deploy support services within businesses is growing and working with partners on a local basis has become one of the most important strategic decisions at Canonical."
Canonical is pushing its Ubuntu server distribution hard, and it showed off some of the optimisations it had done to manage virtual machines last month at an Intel event in Belgium. All of this is really meant to show that Ubuntu is not just a beginner oriented Linux distribution.
There's no doubt that both Red Hat and Suse have done tremendous jobs in bringing Linux to enterprise customers, however competition is always good and might lead to even lower total cost of ownership for Linux. That should light a fire under Microsoft, which eventually will be forced to lower its prices if it wants to remain competitive. µ
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Yeah, but most users do NOT stick to LTS releases. They will download whatever new Ubuntu "stable" version comes out, because quite frankly, they want the newest thing, and some new software requires it (plus Ubuntu's upgrader encourages upgrading to the latest "stable").
And brekages DO happen quite often in non LTS releases. Big name software makers like MathWorks or ID software can afford programming for such a moving target and ship updates, but most software companies either can't or don't want to (EA), when Windows 7 and MacOS X provide rock solid APIs for years.
Dear friend.
It is not required for any third party developer to give a new version of its software every 6 months. An LTS is supported for 3 years and also all enterprise level distributions are supported for more or less same time.
P.S. Few high end softwares like MATLAB,
Mathematica etc.. are all available for linux already. See corresponding websites.
The main problem with Linux is that the API is unstable. In plain english, an app that works with Ubuntu version N may not work in version Ubuntu version N+1. The last time Microsoft broke compatibility with many past apps (with Windows 2000), massive poop storm ensued. In plan english, customers hate when you break compatibility with exisitng apps. With Ubuntu, this happens every 6 months: PulseAudio breakages, random changes in X.org, it's practically impossible for a non-command line app to still work after a year.
So, if you are a games developer for Ubuntu, good luck shipping patches every 6 months for every game you have produced 4 years ago. Or if you develop apps, good luck offering free upgrades to your customers, because their previous version doesn't work anymore with the new version Ubuntu.
The Linux crowd acts like this isn't a problem, and it literally makes me angry. They will boast about how their distros ship with 96 bundled apps, like this matters, but NO word about making things easier for the third party developer. Hay guys, Windows XP shipped with literally ZERO usefull software, but it became a success because of third party software. Even Windows 98SE became a success, despite being miserable from an arhitectual perspective, because it provided a platform third party developers could target.
I am starting to think that all this mess with the unstable API is done on purpose to force developers to open their source code. Sigh...
Anyway, unless Canonical commits of keeping the API stable from now on, don't expect any decent third party software for Ubuntu. And hence any mainstream adoption.
"if developers would start to offer their software on other plat-form like linux/OSX, things would then shift very rapidely."
Since the developers are the ones that can break or make a platform (much like game consoles), why they should torture themselves with Linux? (see above)
I wish you well.
Thanks for giving me free OS's for my PCs.
I want Canonical to prosper so it can keep up the good work!
Linux is good but can it run Crysis? (lol)
the only reason why microsoft is still the major player are the software developers.
if developers would start to offer their software on other plat-form like linux/OSX, things would then shift very rapidely.
if Call of duty can be ported to OSX, then there is no reason why it could not be done to Linux distros.. the only thing keep developper to port to linux must be that OS companies like MS and Apple must give a lot of support for develppement(and maybe bribe) to keep developpers from releasing to free OSes.
Microsoft knows that, because all those pirated Windows in homes arounds the world keep the business from shifting to free OS :
Employees wants to use windows because they use it at home. if employees starts using Linux at home, then they will want Linusx at the Office too.
i bet if linux is to take a huge market share in OSes, it would not stay free for long.. someone would want to make money..
anyways..
MS would not let linux take over (it has a very long arm)
Laughable. Redhat doesnt make any noticeable dent in Microsoft sales, and it's mostly used in places too tight to pay for support anyway like webhosting.
This will just split the Linux market further and you will have more non standard versions of the same thing for everyone to pick between. And yet more versions of the vast numbers of security patches that Linux distributions all require...