AT&T Deal is Evidence of How Ubuntu's Path is Tied to the Cloud

The upward trajectory of Ubuntu and cloud computing remain tied closely together. Canonical has released findings from numerous surveys showing that Ubuntu is the base platform that the largest group of OpenStack deployments use.

Now, in an endorsement move from a very big player,  AT&T has reached for Canonical to implement Ubuntu Linux in its cloud, network and enterprise infrastructure. As we covered here, some are saying that AT&T had closely evaluated Windows and chose Ubuntu instead.

Canonical made a statement saying that AT&T wants to forge the "network of the future," and likes the idea of building more modular solutions that can scale easily and leverage open source.

According to The Var Guy:

"Canonical executives are celebrating the news as a sign of Ubuntu's fitness for deployment in the cloud....The companies have not revealed specifics of how they will work together, but Canonical 'will provide the Ubuntu OS and engineering support for AT&T’s cloud, network and enterprise applications."

 "AT&T's scalable and open future network utilizes the best of Canonical innovation," said John Zannos, vice president of Cloud Alliances and Business Development at Canonical. "AT&T selecting us to support its effort in cloud, enterprise applications and the network provides the opportunity to innovate with AT&T around the next generation of the software-centric network and cloud solutions. Ubuntu is the Operating System of the Cloud and this relationship allows us to bring our engineering expertise around Ubuntu, cloud and open source to AT&T."

AT&T Assistant Vice President of Cloud Technology, Strategy and Planning, Toby Ford, added, "Open source and OpenStack innovations represent a unique opportunity to meet these requirements and Canonical’s cloud and open source expertise make them a good choice for AT&T."

 Of course, it's already been widely publicized that more than half of OpenStack deployments are built on Ubuntu. The Linux platform and the trajectory of cloud computing promise to be tied to each other for years to come.