OStatic

While it may be a completely philosophical debate whether the universe is turtles all the way down, it's a lot less existential to imagine that the internet is clouds all the way up. In April, Canonical previewed its Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (affectionately known as UEC), a system designed to simplify the creation, optimization, and management of cloud environments for private organizations. The interface and functionality of UEC is similar to the Amazon EC2 infrastructure, uses in-house hardware running Ubuntu Server Edition 9.04, and is powered by Eucalyptus Systems cloud computing tools.

Today Canonical officially launched the UEC service, including generalized tech support, consultancy and deployment services. Although UEC support is a joint offering from Eucalyptus Systems and Canonical, the Canonical team will act as the primary contact point in order to simplify and streamline support transactions.

I was never one for cryptozoological taxidermic creations -- you won't find mermonkeys or crocoducks on display in my home. I have, however, for the last few weeks, been hiding a jackalope in my laptop bag. He was an experimental little guy, but the folks at Canonical and the vast community behind Ubuntu have completed the necessary gene splicing and DNA alterations and soon -- very soon -- the final, stable release of Ubuntu 9.04 (the Jaunty Jackalope) will be let loose into the wild.

What's new this time around? How does it all work? And for the wilder types, where locally can you attend a Jaunty Jackalope release party?

Though much of the fanfare in the Ubuntu camp seems to center on the desktop version, its Server Edition has been steadily attracting interest -- and new users. Thanks to the requests of these users and Ubuntu partners, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has announced it is offering its first official training course dedicated solely to the Ubuntu Server Edition.

There's another new twist, however. While this course will be offered at various partner training centers in June, it will also be offered through a virtual classroom.

Last week, I had the pleasure of getting some unique insight into the Ubuntu 8.10 release ( Intrepid Ibex ) from Canonical's marketing manager, Gerry Carr. The finalized server and desktop editions of the 8.10 release will be available for download October 30th, and host a variety of new tools and features.