European Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider City Network, has joined the Ubuntu Certified Public Cloud (CPC) programme. This is the second very big European win for Ubuntu after it signed up OVH earlier this month. As an Ubuntu CPC partner, City Cloud will no longer need to create, curate, patch and maintain Ubuntu images. This will all be done by Ubuntu who will then provide them to City Network.
According to Johan Christenson, CEO and founder of City Network: “The disruptions of traditional business models and the speed in digital innovations, are key drivers for the great demand in open and flexible IaaS across the globe. Therefore, I am very pleased that we are now entering the Ubuntu Certified Public Cloud program, adding yet another opportunity for our customers to run their IT-infrastructure on an open, scalable and flexible platform.”
What does this mean for City Cloud customers?
This is good news for City Cloud customers. They will be able to rely on the fact that the Ubuntu images they are using are the most up-to-date. More importantly there will be no issues over delays in patching or problems with non-certified drivers. It will also increase their ability to port applications between images and even between cloud providers who are Ubuntu CPC partners.
City Cloud is also the first Ubuntu CPC partner in the Middle East. With cloud usage beginning to take-off in the region this is good news. It will allow City Cloud to appeal to a new set of customers especially in Dubai. Over the last year, Dubai has become the cloud hub for the region with several OpenStack vendors, along with AWS, Google and Microsoft Azure all vying for business.
This deal will also help City Network, owners of City Cloud, compete with its big European competitor, OVH. City Network already delivers OpenStack-based cloud from 27 data centres around the world. It has focused on customers who are working in highly regulated industries. Ubuntu CPC will help it attract more of these customers as it adds another layer of reliability to their offering.
Conclusion
Canonical is working hard to position Ubuntu as the pure play OpenStack cloud solution. It sees the Ubuntu CPC as its differentiator to other OpenStack offerings running on other versions of Linux. What is appealing to both cloud providers and customers is the stability that it offers with the images. It will be interesting to see who it manages to sign up next and what announcements it makes at the OpenStack Summit in Boston next month.