Canonical Landscape And Ubuntu: Government Boost?

Opportunity is knocking in the government market for Canonical’s Landscape, a systems management and monitoring tool for Ubuntu systems. Specifically, Autonomic Resources — an integrator that serves the U.S. federal government — is now approved to offer Landscape to government customers running Ubuntu, WorksWithU has learned. Here are some quick details.

First, a little background on selling information technology into the U.S. federal government. Simply put, it isn’t easy. The process can be long and filled with red tape. For starters you need to be on an “approved” list, such as a GSA schedule.

As Fedmarket.com explains:

To be clear: I’m not stating that Lanscape has officially won U.S. government business. Instead, Autonomic Resources has been approved to offer Landscape on its GSA price list, according to Ken Drachnik, Landscape manager at Canonical. In other words, Canonical has cleared a specific hurdle that makes it easier for Landscape to win potential government business. And naturally, Landscape sales would come in conjunction with government Ubuntu deployments.

Canonical originally offered Landscape in a SaaS (software as a service) configuration. But more recently, Canonical has introduced an on-premise version as well, as Drachnik explains in this WorksWithU podcast.

I hope to gather more details next week — when more federal IT experts return from the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. But in the meantime, I believe the Autonomic Resources relationship could potentially give Canonical, Ubuntu and Landscape a boost in the federal market.

Ubuntu, as WorksWithU previously reported, has scored government and public safety wins across the globe. But I must concede: I’m surprised there aren’t more articles about Ubuntu’s potential strengths and weaknesses for government agencies. We’ll be sure to keep that topic in mind in the weeks ahead.