Editorial Director
WorksWithU

Obviously, we love and believe in it and the whole team works really hard to develop it. So we’re always excited and thrilled to hear what people think when we release a new version. Consequently, my thanks that you thought it was interesting to readers! We take the rough with the smooth – and of course know that other people will have different perspectives.

I agree with you that Landscape isn’t a tool to solve every IT problem – wouldn’t it be amazing if it was though! But I hope what we can do with Landscape is deliver the best tool for managing your Ubuntu systems. We’re not competing with Tivoli! But if we can free up a sys admin to do something interesting rather than apply a security update to a hundred machines one at a time … then I think we’ve made life a _little_ better!

Either way you can count on WorksWithU to continue building out its content. We want to be the independent guide to Ubuntu, for enthusiasts and for businesses.

But we’ll also work hard not to be a “cheerleader” for Ubuntu. We don’t want readers to think Ubuntu, Landscape and other related items are tools that solve all IT problems. Instead, we want to responsibly analyze where Ubuntu fits in business — and even where it may not fit.

Either way, we’ll be working hard to earn and maintain readers’ trust.
-jp

Editorial Director
WorksWithU

Thanks for writing about Landscape, I hope your readers will be interested in it and try it out. The cloud whether Amazon’s EC2 or Ubuntu’s Enterprise Cloud (UEC) is all new and the importance of management will only increase. If you’re running a thousand nodes the ability to update and monitor those systems is critical.

Landscape is designed to make the life of systems administrators easier – and that include managed service providers!

Leverage that desire and get out in front by either driving Landscape adoption by creating a set of testimonials..or driving Landscape service evolution by creating a prioritized list of changes synthesized from the WorksWithU 1000 experience. Either way a summary of the WorksWithU 1000 deployment membership experience has immense value in helping to make sure the value of the Landscape service is realized.

-jef

As a growing company, Nine Lives Media Inc. (owner of WorksWithU, The VAR Guy and MSPmentor) has its hands full with multiple research projects at the moment (particularly the MSPmentor 250 that the WorksWithU 1000).

But I do want to acknowledge the following: In recent weeks you’ve challenged us to take a far closer look at Canonical’s business model, and business models across the open source industry. Your ideas above may help us to do that. And I promise to give it more thought as time potentially permits this week.

You should compare the cloud enabled Landscape as a service offering with the Red Hat’s ec2 based cloud enabled RHEL/RHN servicing model currently in beta.
http://www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud/index.html?id
http://www.redhat.com/solutions/cloud/faq/

You’ll notice immediately from the FAQ that Red Hat is taking a different approach towards billing subscriptions for the cloud services.

It seems Canonical is offering a 60 day trial for landscape 1.3. You know what would be great? If you gathered up a smattering of workswithu readers who have Ec2 deployments and challenged them to start the landscape 60 day trial..and have them keep a daily journal. Then at the end of the 60 days, survey them to see how it went and whether or not they are going to keep paying for the service and write up an article based on the feedback. Maybe you can find some good candidates in the WorksWithU 1000 deployment catelog. Even if you can’t find people willing to do it..that would say something significant in and of itself.

The most important question that Canonical needs to find an answer to is what services Ubuntu users feel are worth paying for. A 60-day trial survey like I just proposed could definitely help WorksWithU bring focus to that question. The management integration between Landscape 1.3 and Ec2 could be absolutely superb and yet still not be a set of services people feel are worth paying for. If that’s the case, that’s the sort of hard reality that Canonical needs to learn sooner rather than later.

-jef