Canonical, supplier of the popular Ubuntu distribution of Linux, is partnering with Eucalyptus Systems to offer "private" cloud consulting services. The alliance is the first commercial technical support for implementing open source-based clouds inside the enterprise. Most external clouds, including Amazon's EC2, rely heavily on open source code to hold down costs, provide reliable service, and scale without worrying about a rapid build-up in software licensing fees.

The Eucalyptus project has duplicated in open source code the core Web service APIs of the Amazon cloud. That means Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services will advise on building private clouds that can exchange workloads with Amazon's EC2. Private clouds are built behind the enterprise firewall as server clusters that can move virtualized workloads around as needed. They follow the same Web standards that enable workloads to be sent to a public cloud, and usually provide some means for business users to automatically provision their own virtual machines.

Read More