A few months ago, Canonical and Eucalyptus Systems aligned their product development to create an integrated cloud-software-on-Ubuntu-Linux stack. The startups are now collaborating on service and support, giving IT departments a new option for creating internal cloud computing environments.First the news: Canonical (the commercial software company behind the Ubuntu Linux project) announced June 30 that it's partnering with Eucalyptus Systems to jointly support Eucalyptus-on-Ubuntu, with Canonical acting as the point of contact for customers.

The annual cost to support up to five physical servers and 25 virtual Ubuntu servers is $4,750 for standard support (8 hours per day) and $17,500 for around-the-clock support. Beyond that, additional support is available for one physical server and ten virtual servers for $1,250 (8 hours/day) or $3,000 (24x7).

Site support is also available for entire data centers at one location. It includes an unlimited number of physical and virtual servers for $90,000 (8 hours/day) or $150,000 (24x7).

Now the background: When Ubuntu 9.04 (code-named Jaunty Jackalope) was released in April, it included the open source Eucalyptus 1.5.0 release, for the first time marrying those two platforms. Eucalyptus was developed by researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In April, the core team behind the project launched Eucalyptus Systems as a commercial software company behind the open source program.

InformationWeek profiled Eucalyptus Systems in June. At the time, CTO Rich Wolski described a two-pronged business model in which revenues would come from a commercial release of the Eucalyptus software (due sometime this quarter) and from support services. The arrangement with Canonical is a first step in that direction.

Eucalyptus is a new and relatively small company, but it's off to a good start with customers such as Eli Lilly and NASA. Canonical, founded in 2004, is the more established and larger of the two vendors. As more IT departments evaluate alternatives for creating cloud environments in their data centers, the Canonical-Eucalyptus partnership is something to consider. This is one of those times when two heads (or vendors) are better than one.

Two weeks ago, Canonical certified Ubuntu 9.04 on Hewlett-Packard ProLiant servers. For its part, HP will release a ProLiant support pack for Ubuntu, including agents, drivers, and utilities. It's another step toward an enterprise-class private cloud. For more on Canonical's strategy, see "Ubuntu One: Canonical's Cloud."

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