Karmic Koalas Love Eucalyptus

Guest blogger Simon Wardley, a geneticist with a love of mathematics and a fascination for economics, is the Software Services Manager for Canonical, helping define future cloud computing strategies for Ubuntu. Simon is a passionate advocate and researcher in the fields of open source, commoditization, innovation, and cybernetics.

Mark Shuttleworth recently announced that the release of Ubuntu 9.10 will be code-named Karmic Koala. Whilst many of the developments around Ubuntu 9.10 are focused on the desktop, a significant effort is being made on the server release to bring Ubuntu into the cloud computing space. The cloud effort begins with 9.04 and the launch of a technology preview of Eucalyptus, an open sourced system for creating Amazon EC2-like clouds, on Ubuntu.

I thought I'd discuss some of the reasoning behind Ubuntu's Cloud Computing strategy. Rather than just give a definition of cloud computing, I'll start with a closer look at its underlying causes.

The computing stack is comprised of many layers, from the applications we write, to the platforms we develop in and the infrastructure we build upon. Some activities at various layers of this stack have become so ubiquitous and well defined that they are now suitable for service provision through volume operations. This has led to the growth of the 'as a Service' industries, with providers like Amazon EC2 and Force.com.

Information Technology's shift from a product to a service-based economy brings with it both advantage and disruption. On the one hand, the shift offers numerous benefits including economies of scale (through volume operations), focus on core activities (outsourcing), acceleration in innovation (componentisation), and pay per use (utility charging). On the other hand, many concerns remain, some relating to the transitional nature of this shift (management, security and trust), while others pertain to the general outsourcing of any common activity (second sourcing options, competitive pricing pressures and lock-in). These concerns create significant adoption barriers for the cloud.

At Canonical, the company that sponsors and supports Ubuntu, we intend to provide our users with the ability to build their own clouds whilst promoting standards for the cloud computing space. We want to encourage the formation of competitive marketplaces for cloud services with users having choice, freedom, and portability between providers. In a nutshell, and with all due apologies to Isaac Asimov, our aim is to enable our users with 'Three Rules Happy' cloud computing. That is to say:

• Rule 1: I want to run the service on my own infrastructure.


• Rule 2: I want to easily migrate the service from my infrastructure to a cloud provider and vice versa with a few clicks of a button.


• Rule 3: I want to easily migrate the service from one cloud provider to another with a few clicks of a button.

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