Canonical celebrates new UA: Landscape interface with Ubuntu Advantage free trial offer

New interface significantly eases feature deployment for systems management tool

Canonical today announced a free trial to showcase the entirely new interface for its systems management solution, Ubuntu Advantage: Landscape.

Landscape has been available to Ubuntu users for four years and is now part of the Ubuntu Advantage service from Canonical, increasingly a critical component of larger-scale Ubuntu deployments on server and desktop.

“We are seeing large and very large deployments of Ubuntu on desktops and servers at a wide range of organisations,” said Neil Levine, vice president, Corporate Services at Canonical. “The key to scaling to tens, hundreds and even thousands of machines is simplifying their management. Ubuntu Advantage through Landscape does this and in the latest version makes managing applications and machines across virtual, physical and even cloud environments incredibly straightforward for any administrator.”

Ubuntu Advantage: Landscape has seen significant growth in adoption in recent months applied across a wide rage of use cases. Skalica City Hall in Slovakia uses Landscape to manage its 100+ Ubuntu desktops.

“Deploying Ubuntu and UA: Landscape has reduced our cost of ownership by 70% compared with our previous operating system infrastructure well as improving the availability of our systems to users,” said Martin Andel, senior systems administrator at Skalica City Hall. “Landscape allows us to easily manage all these desktops using the centralised web interface. At any time we can monitor the entire network, deploy updates at a stroke, install new applications or even centrally manage upgrades.”

The latest version of Ubuntu Advantage: Landscape features an entirely refreshed user interface to make the features of the product more discoverable and to make the information displayed more meaningful. To mark this refresh, Canonical is offering any Ubuntu user the chance to try Ubuntu Advantage for free for thirty days.

“One of the traditional benefits to Linux has been the ease with which administrators can support themselves,” said Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst at RedMonk. “But systems administrators are always looking for ways to automate repetitive tasks and reporting, which is what drives interest and demand for tools like Ubuntu Advantage: Landscape.”

Pricing, availability and useful links

• Registration for Ubuntu Advantage free trial
• Screenshots of Ubuntu Advantage: Landscape
• Ubuntu Advantage for servers specification and pricing
• Ubuntu Advantage for desktops specification and pricing

About Canonical

Canonical provides engineering, online and professional services to Ubuntu partners and customers worldwide. As the company behind the Ubuntu project, Canonical is committed to the production and support of Ubuntu – an ever-popular and fast-growing open-source operating system. It aims to ensure that Ubuntu is available to every organisation and individual on servers, desktops, laptops and netbooks.

Canonical partners with computer hardware manufacturers to certify Ubuntu, provides migration, deployment, support and training services to businesses, and offers online services direct to end users. Canonical also builds and maintains collaborative, open-source development tools to ensure that organisations and individuals can participate fully in innovations within the open-source community. For more information, please visit www.canonical.com.