Cloud computing is highlighted by Red Hat and Canonical

This year, there are many hot spots in the IT industry. The trend of next year should be cloud computing. Many large manufacturers have put forward many measures for cloud computing. Red Hat and Canonical, the two largest Linux vendors, respectively announced new initiatives to provide cloud computing commercial services to customers. I don't know if Linux will emit a ray of light in the fog of cloud computing?

RedHat launched a new cloud supplier certification program, while Canonical, as the commercial vendor behind Ubuntu, is the largest Linux operating system, which provides paid cloud services. Both parties may make efforts to help Linux vendors use cloud technologies to generate revenue and provide services for enterprises that need cloud computing.

Red Hat: win three victories for users, ISVs, and cloud providers

RedHat has rich experience in cloud computing. It has been providing Linux for the Amazon EC2 platform for more than a year, but the product was still labeled as beta testing. With the launch of the new Certified Cloud Provider project, RedHat will authenticate its Amazon Cloud services, according to Mike Evans, vice president of RedHat Enterprise Development, this makes it very convenient for users who want to become cloud service providers. This is not the first time that Redhat has been involved in cloud computing.

On the one hand, the fully-produced Red Hat product can now be provided to Amazon EC2 users, not just test versions. According to Evans, users can run RedHat applications in their IT environments due to Amazon authentication, or you can transfer them to the Amazon platform for operation-during which you can get full support, compatibility, and security updates. Red Hat customers can also flexibly switch the purchased applications between the platform environment.

"In addition to making end users more confident and flexible to use the Amazon platform, similar information will be sent to our thousands of ISVs (Independent Software Vendor, Independent Software Vendor) partners, "certified cloud providers are Red Hat technology and business partners. For independent software vendors, if their applications are certified by RHEL or JBoss, it is much easier for your cloud computing products to cooperate with certified cloud providers."

In Evans's view, cloud providers and end users want to have more options on cloud applications. Although operating systems, databases, and application servers have become a good start, more ISVs are needed in the world. RedHat hopes to help more ISVs develop their cloud applications. Of course, in addition to the cloud services provided by Red Hat and Canonical, Cloudera released the Hadoop cloud computing service for "Ordinary People" and threatened: "What red hat does for Linux is exactly what we do for Hadoop ."

"Therefore, this plan is centered on cloud supplier authentication, but we can see a three-win scene: end users, ISVs, and cloud providers," Evans said, the goal of this effort is to "increase trust and reduce barriers to wider cloud applications ".

Canonical: Ubuntu in the cloud

Almost the same as RedHat, Canonical also jumped into commercial Cloud Services to provide support for users. The official name is Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services ).

"The support and Consulting Services released this time are designed for the Cloud environment and mainly consist of two parts: the underlying Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud ), and Ubuntu Server Edition, which supports running virtual machines, are fully considered." Simon Wardley, head of Canonical cloud strategy, said that, of course, in addition to enterprise-level Ubuntu cloud services, personal services will also be provided.

Ubuntu's Cloud technology uses the Eucalyptus open source project as the basis. From the release of Jaunty Ubuntu Linux the previous day, Eucalyptus now has its own set of commercial support services.

Wardley explained that Canonical provides support through technical experts in its Global Support Service Team. He added that Canonical can provide additional technical support to Eucalyptus wherever necessary.

For Ubuntu enterprise cloud services, installation and configuration are the key factors. "Optimizing the basic hardware environment is the quickest way to save money for cloud computing," Wardley said. These services will be used in an enterprise environment, and any enterprise will receive professional and continuous support from Canonical ."

Comparison between Red Hat and Ubuntu: What are the values of certification for cloud services?

Although both Red Hat and Canonical provide cloud services, Canonical does not have a plan to provide certification for suppliers as red hat does. RedHat believes that authentication is of great value, but Canonical does not.

"For now, we think that the value of providing certification to public cloud providers is limited, because they have already been able to do well in running the public cloud," Wardley said. "We do think that providing users with an open-source system has great value. This allows users to build their own private clouds and meet Amazon EC2 API standards ."

Let's look forward to the cloud computing era next year.

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