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Canonical, the founder of the Ubuntu project, today launched new professional services to help and support users building 'private clouds', cloud infrastructures behind a corporate firewall.

The move follows the technical preview in April of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC), an open-source system that enables organisations to build their own clouds that match the interface of Amazon EC2. UEC is now available as part of the Ubuntu Server Edition technology stack.

By creating private clouds with UEC, organisations can optimise server use and increase data-centre efficiencies, while lowering costs and providing end users with self-service IT. Ubuntu is the first Linux distribution to provide such a system and now Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services from Canonical help businesses build these environments with optimal efficiency.

“Enterprises are realising that building 'private clouds' enables them to better manage variable workloads, while reducing the waste of idle servers. Building on open-source technology also avoids the issue of vendor lock-in,” said Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical. “Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud enables businesses to do this - and the addition of these services helps them to do it with confidence.”

Canonical has partnered with Eucalyptus, whose eponymous product forms the base of UEC, to jointly provide the service but with a single interface for the customer through the Canonical support team.

“While the IT industry talks of future strategies and releases vapour ware, UEC today allows businesses to deploy and now support a 'private cloud' on open source technologies from a renowned Linux provider,” said Woody Rollins, CEO of Eucalyptus. “We are very excited to lend our expertise to building the type of professional services that will help more businesses discover the benefits of private clouds built on open technologies.”

Pricing and Availability

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services enable users to scale up from a five-machine environment all the way to a site license covering all machines, physical and virtual, in a single location.

Yearly pricing for entry-level support for five physical servers and up to 25 virtual Ubuntu servers is $4,750 for 9x5 standard support and $17,500 for 24x7 advanced support. Additional support packs are available per physical server and per ten virtual servers for $1,250 p.a. for standard support and $3,000 p.a. for advanced.

Site support is also available which covers one geographical location. It includes an unlimited number of physical and virtual servers for $90,000 p.a. for standard support and $150,000 p.a. for advanced.

To use Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud, users must first install Ubuntu 9.04 Server Edition available at no charge from http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download-server

To find out more about Ubuntu Cloud Computing, please visit http://www.ubuntu.com/cloud

To enquire about support, please visit: http://www.canonical.com/contact/cloud

more information on Cloud Service:

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/cloud/services

To keep up-to-date with Ubuntu Cloud activity, follow the cloud blog aggregator: http://cloud.ubuntu.com

Follow Ubuntu cloud on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ubuntucloud