Ubuntu One takes baby step to the cloud

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May 15, 2009

Ubuntu Linux sponsor Canonical has launched a beta web-based "cloud" service that offers online storage and file synchronization for Ubuntu 9.04 users. The "invitation only" Ubuntu One is pretty bare bones right now, but it could be the start of something bigger, says an industry report.

Offered to selected Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) users who are invited after applying for the service, the beta version of Ubuntu One offers 2GB of free storage, or up to 10GB for $10 per month The online storage service is also said to synchronize file uploads from different PCs over the web. In addition, users can share documents with other Ubuntu 9.04 users, says Canonical.

It is unclear how ambitious Canonical will get with its first "cloud" offering, but according to a story in The Register, the company will focus primarily on services rather than cloud infrastructure itself.

"We will not provide infrastructure," Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth was quoted as saying. "We will not compete with Amazon. We'd rather provide slick and leading services."

Mark Shuttleworth

Shuttleworth (pictured) was further quoted in the story as saying that the service was an attempt to differentiate itself vs. Microsoft. "I think the folks to beat are Microsoft," he was said to have commented.

In preparing for its Windows 7 launch, Microsoft has already deployed a "SkyDrive" online storage service that offers 25GB of storage for free and supports uploads and access from any device, not just a PC running Windows, says The Register. SkyDrive is also said to feature collaboration and document sharing.

A similar online storage service, Dropbox, is available to Linux users as well as Microsoft and Mac customers. It provides 2GB free or $10 a month (or $100 a year) for 50GB -- five times the amount of storage Ubuntu One is currently offering for the same price. DropBox also provides syncing and file-sharing services.

Canonical is less likely to provide a major commercial cloud service as it is to offer up a proof of concept, and to "add features that help other people build public and private clouds and online services that can compete with Microsoft and Windows on the PC," says The Register.

Ubuntu 9.06 has already added several features targeted at the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), including the ability to run Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) and the Eucalyptus open-source framework for implementing hosted clusters on EC2. Ubuntu's next version, Karmic Koala, will extend these features with messaging, directory, and collaboration features, says the story.

The article also noted that Canonical is working with Oracle to certify its database on Ubuntu.

Availability

The new Ubuntu One site should be available here, and the story The Register should be here.

-- Eric Brown

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