First appeared in 2005 and consolidated in 2006 with the release of Ubuntu 6.06 Long Term Support, the Ubuntu Server Edition became quite popular in enterprises. With 5-year support and 2-year release cycles, the LTS versions of Ubuntu provide a stable and secure environment for companies that deploy long-term platforms.

The Ubuntu Server Edition follows the same, six-month release schedule of Ubuntu Desktop Edition, for those who want the latest Linux kernel and up-to-date applications and utilities. According to a recent in-depth survey made by Canonical in collaboration with Redmonk, more and more corporations as well as small and medium businesses are choosing Ubuntu for their IT infrastructure over other solutions.

In the context of a tough economic climate, many enterprises are searching for less-pricey products but without sacrificing quality and reliability. "Just last week we spoke to a Chicago-based finance house that runs entirely on Ubuntu server and runs their open and proprietary stack on Ubuntu on Hewlett Packard machines mostly, with some Dell in the mix. These heterogeneous environments are pretty common and the range of software it is run on pretty wide. Our survey also indicted that hardware support is very important to our users.", said Mark Murphy, Alliances manager at Canonical, on the official blog.

And because of the ascending popularity of Ubuntu, HP decided to partner with Canonical in providing full certification of Ubuntu on their Proliant servers. Being among the supported operating systems, Ubuntu's clients will be reassured that they made a good decision, while others will certainly start thinking about deploying Ubuntu solutions in their companies. "Furthermore both companies are fully co-operating at the engineering level to provide full underlying confidence for HP customers using the certified servers. This is great news for users who’ve adopted Ubuntu as their enterprise class server software and even better news for those using HP Proliant servers.", ended Mark Murphy.

About Canonical

Canonical Ltd, a global organization headquartered in Europe, is the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Globally recognized as a leading services provider, Canonical is committed to the development, distribution and support of open source software products and communities.