Canonical Touts Its New Microsoft Partnership

Canonical is promoting today its new partnership with Microsoft that allows Ubuntu Linux to run on Windows Azure.

As the latest string of Microsoft-Linux news, following Microsoft sponsoring LinuxTag Berlin and then hosting GNOME & Mono Festival of Love, there's a new Microsoft-Canonical partnership.

This morning I received an email with the subject line of "UNDER EMBARGO: Canonical's Newest Partnership." In that email, Canonical's press representative is pushing the new partnership whereby Microsoft is letting Ubuntu in on their Windows Azure cloud computing platform.

Microsoft is now allowing non-Windows platforms to run on their Azure cloud computing platform. Besides Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, other distributions being offered by Microsoft on Azure include CentOS 6.2, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP2, and openSUSE 12.1.

Below is the Canonical email about this new Microsoft partnership for Azure.

I thought you might be interested in some news *under embargo until 12:00 noon EDT today* from the Canonical/Ubuntu front. Today, Canonical is announcing its newest partnership with Microsoft, which will provide Ubuntu users with the ability to obtain and launch official Ubuntu images on Microsoft’s Windows Azure.

What is Microsoft Windows Azure?
Windows Azure is a cloud computing platform (PaaS) used to build, host and scale web applications through Microsoft data centers.

With this partnership, Windows Azure now allows:

· Full management of individual virtual machine instances

· Full customization and control of infrastructure behind Cloud instances

This move represents a necessary and strategic step for Canonical, as they aim to create continued Cloud ubiquity amongst the industry, as many developers and IT shops continue to use both Ubuntu and Windows as workloads migrate to the Cloud.

You can find full details about the partnership here in a Canonical blog post, which will be posted as of 12:00 noon EDT today – or, if you’d like to discuss what this collaboration means from an industry perspective, we’d be more than happy to set up a call with Chris Kenyon, Vice President of Sales and Development at Canonical.

You can also take Ubuntu for Windows Azure for a spin here.

There's also more information via the Canonical Blog.