Canonical and RedMonk Release Survey on Ubuntu Server Usage

Thousands of businesses using Ubuntu Server for mission-critical workloads in every sector.

London, UK (PRWEB) February 4, 2009 -- Canonical and analyst firm RedMonk today released findings of a survey sent to thousands of Ubuntu Server users (blog.canonical.com). It was developed with the Ubuntu community and was completed by almost 7,000 respondents. The survey confirmed that Ubuntu was being widely used in the most common workloads (web, print, file, database and mail servers) and that it is considered mission critical by most respondents.

"The popularity of Ubuntu evidenced by the survey is not surprising to those who cover the Linux market," said Stephen O'Grady, RedMonk. "What was surprising was the breadth of workloads that Ubuntu is servicing. Far from being relegated to a niche role, the distribution is being leveraged for a variety of enterprise tasks, from the mundane to the mission critical."

"This survey validates the technology choices we've made for Ubuntu on server," said Steve George, director of Corporate Services at Canonical. "We pull together the best components available and make them easy to install, update and secure. We want businesses to embrace the best of open source at the core of their businesses while enabling the choice of proprietary applications to run on top of it. The survey was a useful straw poll to see if we are making good choices that businesses want to use. It is a positive reinforcement."

Ubuntu Server Usage Survey Highlights

The survey highlights three key points about Ubuntu Server. Users are deploying Ubuntu Server for vital business workloads such as web, database, file, print, and mail serving. Security, back-up and firewall are also important workloads being run on Ubuntu Server.

The results show a strong correlation between these workloads and those that users consider mission critical. To underpin these mission critical uses, respondents considered simple upgrades, package management, hardware support, proven security and the life cycle of the product as vital to their choice of platform.

Ubuntu Server Edition is also frequently a platform for innovation -- for instance, as a solid platform for cloud infrastructures. Many also reported growing use of Ubuntu as a virtualization platform. Users also intend rolling out many more Ubuntu Servers in the coming months, the research found.

Differences between Large and Small Business Use

Also apparent in the survey results were the small but significant differences in how large and small businesses use Ubuntu. Larger companies (1000 plus employees) use Ubuntu in clustering, batch processing, systems management and data mining more than smaller businesses, because they have more of a requirement for these types of workloads. There is also a small spike of use for larger enterprises using Ubuntu for development and testing. With free updates and maintenance, a clear upgrade path to a long term supported platform and a support model for when the server is needed in production, this makes sense for this type of user.

About the Ubuntu Server Survey:

Canonical and the Ubuntu server community ran the survey between November and December 2008 to determine the detail of Ubuntu server usage. It was self-selecting, promoted through the Ubuntu website and some popular forums, with Redmonk advising on the questions in advance. In the end, a total of 6,819 people representing the same number of organisations completed the survey.

To view the complete results of the Ubuntu Server Survey, please visit [ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/surveyresults. Registration is required.

About RedMonk:

RedMonk, LLC, the open source analyst company, is an industry research firm that both covers and practices open source in an effort to bring high quality analysis to the volume market. With analysts in three countries and clients from Fortune 50 firms to two person startups, RedMonk is an industry analyst firm built for the people, by the people. The author of popular and collaborative research since 2002, RedMonk has committed itself to supporting communities and developers even as it has pioneered new markets.

For more information, please visit www.redmonk.com.

About Canonical Ltd

Canonical Ltd, the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu, is a global organisation committed to the development, distribution and support of open source software products and communities. World-class 24x7 commercial support for Ubuntu is available through Canonical's global support team and partners. Since its launch in October 2004 Ubuntu has become one of the most highly regarded Linux distributions with millions of users around the world.

Ubuntu will always be free to download, free to use and free to distribute to others. With these goals in mind, Ubuntu aims to be the most widely used Linux system, and is the centre of a global open source software ecosystem. For more information visit www.canonical.com or www.ubuntu.com.

Contact:

Joseph Eckert

Baker Communications Group

jeckert (at) bakercg.com

203-270-3711

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