Canonical and IBM have announced plans to create an Ubuntu distribution for  IBM  z Systems. The collaboration with Canonical brings Ubuntu’s scale-out and cloud expertise to the IBM z Systems platform, further expanding its reach and support.  With the expansion of Ubuntu support to IBM z Systems, IBM mainframe customers will benefit from Ubuntu’s ecosystem of scale-out and cloud solutions. “IBM and Canonical teaming to bring Ubuntu to z Systems allows customers to leverage the speed and security of z Systems, and the open-source software and tools of Ubuntu, to enhance the IT operations for a new universe of customers, ” notes  Jane Silber, CEO of Canonical.  The beta version of Ubuntu 16.04 for IBM z Systems is now available online.

To learn more about the Ubuntu Distribution for LinuxONE , we sat down to talk to Mark Shuttleworth the founder of Canonical and John Zannos,  Vice President of Cloud Channels and Alliances at Canonical.

Mark is the founder of Canonical and responsible for strategy. He founded Thawte Consulting, a certificate authority for X.509 certificates , before selling the company to VeriSign in 1999. In 2004, he founded Ubuntu and Canonical, combining responsibility for strategy and user experience at Canonical with roles on the Ubuntu Technical Board and Community Council.

John is responsible for Cloud Alliances and Channels at Canonical. He is responsible for execution of the Ubuntu Cloud Platform business, ecosystem, partnerships, alliances and Telecom strategy.  John is a member of the Board of Directors of the OpenStack, OPNFV and OpenPOWER foundations

Q. What do you hope the partnership  will bring to Ubuntu/Canonical?
A.  Canonical and IBM announced plans to create an Ubuntu distribution for z Systems. The collaboration with Canonical brings Ubuntu’s scale-out and cloud expertise to the IBM z Systems platform, further expanding its reach and support. It also bring the Ubuntu developer community to z Systems, this will allow for the innovation of these developers to include the security and performance of z Systems.

Q. What do you think some of the advantages of working  z Systems and  Ubuntu/Canonical together will bring to your and IBM’s clients?

A.  Canonical working with IBM will deepen IBM z Systems Mainframe commitment to the open source by bringing the best workloads of the open world in order to help clients embrace new mobile and hybrid cloud workloads By bringing the Ubuntu operating system to the IBM z System Mainframe we will make the cloud and scale out applications ( like. Apache Spark,MongoDB, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL) customers love to run on Ubuntu available to the mainframe.

Q. Are there any top of mind challenges you find your clients are facing?

A. They are challenged by how best to implement a hybrid cloud solutions that allows them to put the right workload on the right platform, while delivering performance, security and workload portability.

Q. And how do you think the Ubuntu/Canonical partnership between IBM z Systems can help to solve some of them?

A. We are looking forward to working with IBM z System existing and new customers to provide the best hybrid cloud and scaling environment, and making the experience of Ubuntu on IBM mainframes absolutely fantastic.

Q. Any comments on the profile or type of customers you have and what some of their top of mind challenges are? Any noticeable trends or patterns?

A. Canonical and IBM share many customers ranging from the largest enterprises in Telecom and Finance, and the newest fastest growing scale out companies like Netflix and Uber. The are all challenged by how best to deploy hybrid cloud and scale out technologies while delivery the best experience for their customers. By IBM and Canonical supplying Ubuntu for z Systems we are given them further platform choice allowing them to use the scale out and cloud applications they love to run on Ubuntu.