Recently, Ubuntu founder and Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth spoke with The 451 Group at length about Dapper, Ubuntu, and the trends and development of the open source and free software movements as they relate to enterprise information technology. Last week, we ran Part I of a multi-part series in which The 451 Group presents Shuttleworth’s comments along with insight and commentary from 451 Group analysts who cover the worlds of open source and enterprise software. These include Rachel Chalmers, Martin Schneider, Raven Zachary and me, Nick Selby.

When I got Mark Shuttleworth on the line it seemed appropriate to say thanks for the OS he supports which we use here at 451. I had moved my main desktop machine from Suse to Gentoo to a range of Debian-derivatives including Libranet and Xandros, before settling all my desktops on Ubuntu at Hoary Hedgehog, about a year ago.

Mark Shuttleworth: “That’s fantastic. We were very fortunate in that we set out to make things just work right about the same time as the [community developing the] underlying infrastructure - the kernel and the other pieces of the infrastructure - also set themselves that same kind of challenge. I think we get a lot of credit for [having done] work which was actually some fantastic work done by the broader community. We really were just at the right place at the right time in terms of stepping up to say it is possible to build a Linux desktop experience which will work in a predictable, sane fashion for people who are not necessarily … people who don’t necessarily see themselves as computer experts.

The DZ Factor…
Yet having much of the desktop ‘just work,’ as Ubuntu likes to say, still doesn’t bring substantial new enterprise users of Linux on the Desktop. As Rachel Chalmers said in her comment to Part I, “I think [Shuttleworth] is saying that the bulk of desktop Ubuntu adoption is likely to be among fellow-travelers. I think that’s true: people will choose Windows for convenience or out of laziness, Mac for its UI and Ubuntu for its righteousness.”

I’m not sure about choosing it for its righteousness as opposed to the fact that it just works, but it’s made me wonder: the vast majority of enterprise computers are folks who need a browser, email, prouctivity suite (without macro support) and calendar. What stops enterprises from imaging a nice Ubuntu (or whataver) distro and rolling out thousands of machines with Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and Evolution. For each machine they could save at least $239 in licensed software.

Doesn’t $239,000 per thousand such deployments interest enterprise IT purchasers?

Not so much, apparently. Our head of IT, David Zarnitzky, put it plainly: People are used to what they’re used to, and the disruptive cost of having them not be able to do what they’re used to isn’t worth $239 per user to us. Is it technically ‘better?’ maybe, but the cost of spending upwards of an hour with each person who gets a machine makes it not better.

That’s an extremely valid point. We put it to Shuttleworth: what’s the biggest barrier to enterprise adoption of Linux on the desktop in the enterprise.

Mark Shuttleworth: “The primary barrier I think is pure inertia, effectively, and the fact that you’re dealing with enormously complex interoperating systems. The advantage I think we are starting to benefit from in all of that is that, as companies and offices have become more distributed, more used to working using Internet protocols effectively as the glue that holds everybody together, to the extent that you support those protocols and are able to make employees full participants in the corporate workflow, the desktop is less and less of a particular issue.

“But fundamentally the big barrier to adoption is people’s familiarity with their way of doing things and their sense that any different way of doing things is going to be a risk to them - a risk which perhaps doesn’t make any economic sense to take on. So we certainly do see much greater rates of adoption in parts of the world which are embracing computing for the first time - the developing and emerging markets are powering ahead with Linux adoption because, for those folks, compatibility with yesterday is far less of an issue than functionality today and the ability to shape it and make it do the things that they need it to do.

“We do believe that free software on the desktop will become a reality even in the United States and Europe, but it will take longer to achieve that and it will start out in very tightly defined types of areas; fixed-function type areas rather than general purpose desktop type areas.

Rachel Chalmers: “I totally agree - never underestimate the power of conservatism and inertia, but acknowledge the fact that the biggest markets - Brazil, India, PRC - are essentially greenfield.”

Martin Schneider: “I agree that familiarity and laziness can and are huge barriers across the board. How many times have I seen a software vendor with an outdated architecture continue to sell load of products simply because the SMB space (for example) just is not willing to move wholesale to Web-based architectures? So sadly, the onus is on the makers of products like Ubuntu to make them as easy to install, operate (and inter-operate) as possible.

And I see this shift starting to happen. The one-click installation of LAMP capabilities now apparently available in Ubuntu allow users to run and get going, without having to even really know what is going on underneath. Once users can get an alternative OS (and all the necessary Web servers, databases, etc.) up and running as fast and easily as they could with something like Firefox, then we’ll see some real penetration beyond the ‘righteous indignants’ and open source zealots of the world. But the folks at Ubuntu seem to be moving in this direction with its installer buttons and key partnerships with more mainstream vendors like Sun to move beyond the evangelist phase and into the ‘let’s get this into people’s homes and offices’ phase.”

Raven Zachary: Pure inertia? I guess it depends on what inertia you are referring to. At my last company, everyone was expected to have Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, and Excel to communicate and do business (I didn’t and I got along just fine). Linux already provides tools to integrate with Exchange and Office. I don’t think the system is enormously complex, I think it’s just much easier to order another Dell for the new employee with the commercial software preloaded by an IT admin (who, by the way, doesn’t have budget responsibility or accountability to the investors). This type of inertia? Absolutely! Stick a Linux desktop in front of an HR analyst with Firefox, Evolution, and OpenOffice, and you’re not going to have a major problem on your hands. It’s just a matter of doing something different, and you just may save money in the process (the value of the HR analyst is another issue entirely!).

How Canonical Makes Money
One of the biggest questions on the minds of Ubuntu users has been, ‘What in it for Canonical?’ It must be said that no one at Ubuntu or Cannoical has been secretive about this: what’s in it for Canonical is money, though it cannot be denied that Canonical’s investment in Ubuntu has eleemosynary elements as well: it’s clearly got some mojo in terms of its unwavering support of free software. And how many Microsoft or even Red Hat employees would be encouraged to write something like, My first 48 hours enduring Ubuntu 5.04, a fairly hilarious and spot-on critique of Ubuntu’s interface, written by Matthew Paul Thomas, a Canonical interface designer. He wrote that on Shuttleworth’s dime, Shuttleworth’ time, which says much for Shuttleworth’s self-confidence. But how, specifically, is Canonical looking to capitalize on its investment? Shuttleworth spoke about Ubuntu generally, then Canonical’s sustainability model around it.

Mark Shuttleworth: “Ubuntu is in my mind the emergence of a second generation of Linux platform or Linux distribution. [It's] built not on the idea that Linux should look like proprietary software, but that Linux should really deliver what free software can deliver. I should put that slightly differently: Ubuntu aims to deliver the real promise of free software, and that spans a number of different areas. First, we believe that the software should be highly functional and reliable, because we do believe that free software has a potential to be better quality software, that the processes that actually produce the software results in software that is better understood, better scrutinized, better tested, and so on. So we try to integrate all those processes into Ubuntu itself.

“Second, the software should be available freely, that there should be no licensing charges associated with it. And so Ubuntu is unusual in that it really is a commercial product, which has support contracts and certification agreements and training and skill certification infrastructure wrapped around it, but at the same time it is genuinely freely available: under open source licenses with no obligation to sign any sort of contract in order to use it - and that includes security updates and improvements over time. So Ubuntu is really fundamentally different from any of the other Linux distributions which have gone before it, because it takes a very strong stance in favor of what free software is all about, what Linux is really all about.

“The business model around Ubuntu is professional services oriented, so Canonical is the company which has effectively underwritten most of the development of Ubuntu - although there are now a number of other companies that actively are hitching their stars to the same wagon effectively and investing in the platform.

[More than 300 such organizations are around today: see this post for more - Ed.]

We have a very strong relationship with a broader community, which is called the Debian community, and that community has several hundred active developers in it, which means that Ubuntu has the ability to incorporate new work being done globally very, very quickly. And so we are able to present something which is very, very up-to-date at a relatively low cost in terms of the cost to produce at is a complete operating system type environment. So our biz model really is to offer efficient professional services, and keep the cost of producing the platform itself at a low enough level that we can make the whole thing support itself using professional services such as support, certification, training, and so on.

Rachel Chalmers: “Okay, that’s really interesting. Obviously Ubuntu’s wholesale buy-in to the Debian/Free Software Foundation philosophy has thrown up the best desktop distro so far: but I have to say that when he outlines his plans for Canonical professional services, it doesn’t sound like that huge a departure from what Red Hat and Novell SuSE have been doing. Is Ubuntu great BECAUSE it’s religiously Free? Now we get to find out. Hurd wasn’t.

Nick Selby: “It’s not clear from Shuttleworth’s comments here, but according to my understanding from published interviews with Canonical COO Jane Silber, I think the departure from RH and Novell is simply a matter of not locking people in to enterprise-wide contracts, allowing people to pick and choose which enterprise support they wish for specific servers. At a starting price of $750 per server, per year that could be extremely useful in running pilot programs at enterprises because it could reduce the risk to the cost of the hardware, a few hours’ installation time, and $750. That’s got to appeal to some as being a risk free way to try a hot new distro, but I wouldn’t go quitting the day job just yet over those kinds of revenues in the short term. True, Canonical seems, um, well funded. But this kind of model is also not un-imitatable: if Red Hat and Novell see it start to take off, what’s to stop them from offering it as an option as well? Then we’re back to a straight bake-off, and that same conservatism and risk-averse default position of enterprises kicks in to work against Canonical.”

Raven Zachary: Grow with care (and I believe it will). Ubuntu is on the path to become a major server distribution. Are we going to see a ‘buy now’ or a ‘download now’ button as our primary call to action in three years? Go look at Red Hat – it’s ‘buy now’. Go look at JBoss, it’s ‘download now’. An odd analogy, as JBoss is about to become part of Red Hat, but it’s still relevant (both companies have successful business models, but their level of transparency is quite different). I don’t think Ubuntu is that interesting if it morphs into a subscription business model. Why choose Ubuntu over Red Hat or SUSE in that scenario? Subscriptions sound too much like licenses (money moving from my capital budget to my expense budget).

Certification
An Ubuntu certification program was announced, and it would seem that the certification is one of the key areas behind a move towards enterprise adoption of Ubuntu.

Mark Shuttleworth: “The certification really does two things; First it allows a lot of people out there who have skills, to document those skills and to get those skills certified - there are tens of thousands of developers and systems administrators and infrastructure managers out there who are very comfortable in the Ubuntu and Debian infrastructure, but have never had an efficient way to certify those skills. So our announcement of a certification framework basically allows them to formalize their existing skills base.

“The other thing that it does do is allow larger organizations to find service providers that they can have real confidence in; it starts to professionalize the ecosystem of companies that provide professional support for Ubuntu and the Debian platforms. There are 300 companies around the wold now that have announced services based on Ubuntu or for Ubuntu. A lot of that work has largely been ad hoc and informal. So the certification is firstly to turn that into a more cohesive more traditional certified ecosystem.”

Next week, on 8 June, we’ll have comments from Shuttleworth on geographical demand for Ubuntu, localized versions, and the geographic appeal of commercial Ubuntu support. If you like or hate what you’ve read here, or have a comment to add, please register - it’s fast and free and leave us a note.