Ubuntu Linux Claims 12,000 Cloud Deployments

darthcamaro writes "The cloud is more than just hype for Ubuntu. Canonical COO Matt Asay is now saying that they can count 12,000 deployments of the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud. He also thinks the cloud is where Ubuntu can make money — because in his view, the company for the last five years wasn't set up to generate revenue. From the article: 'The conversion of non-paying to paying users is often a difficult ratio to report for any open source effort, and Ubuntu is no exception. Asay noted that Canonical plans to get more aggressive at tracking its free-to-paid ratio on Ubuntu Linux and its related services and technologies. "For the first five years of the company's life, it wasn't set up to make money," Asay said. "The company was set up to make a fantastic Linux distribution and other tools around it and get it out there and get people using it. That was the focus." That's now changing at Canonical as the emphasis is now shifting to generating revenues.'"

Good for them.

[MZeora]

Ubuntu is a very nice starting distro to get into the knowledge of Linux. I'm glad they make it work as well as they have (in my experience I had minor issues between 9.04/9.10)
I hope they can find a way to make proper funding and really make improvements to the other flavors (KDE variant Kubuntu being sometimes quite broken)

So when does Canonical need to start making money?

[ihatewinXP]

So if it wasnt set up to make money for the last 5 years - but that time is over - what changes will we see?

Will the growth in cloud / corporate paid users be enough to make the company and quality of the distribution grow ala Red Hat (which some would argue pushed the focus on users to the side for corporate..)?

Or will the money not be enough and will start to put the crunch on Ubuntu - and what end user ramifications would that have?

Sorry nothing but questions here...

Re:Why choose Ubuntu? Why not something else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Packetmanager and base layout. The community also counts.

Re:So when does Canonical need to start making mon

[monoqlith]

Shuttleworth, as far as i can tell, never planned to make money with Canonical and Ubuntu. He's rich enough to subsidize the two indefinitely. So the fact that Ubuntu might now actually start to generate self-sustaining or even profitable revenues is extra credit, and always was. I think any future changes in the companies are still going to reflect the culture of emphasizing a good, widely deployed Desktop Linux rather than necessarily turning a profit.

Re:Good for them.

[Eevee]

Tightwad and unethical have nothing to do with each other.

Re:Good for them.

[darkpixel2k]

If you're using it just because you're a tight wad then you might as well pirate the OS you really want.

That makes about as much sense as "If you're sleeping her just because you're desperate and she's free, you might as well rape the woman you really want."

One situation is 'free', the other is 'illegal'.

Re:Failure Ahead?

[ScentCone]

My theory is that if the focus is generating revenues, not the customer (or the product), failure is to be expected in this case

Why to people always act like these things are mutually exclusive? Who wants customers that can't undertand that the people providing them with the goods and services they want won't be there if they're bankrupt? Companies have to keep customers in mind, and customers who like those companies can't complain that money needs to change hands for the relationship to grow and thrive.