A deal has been struck between the two companies

Aug 17, 2015 14:03 GMT  ·  By

Canonical and IBM have just announced a new partnership to bring Ubuntu scale-out and cloud expertise to the IBM z Systems platform by introducing two new Linux mainframe servers.

IBM already had a partnership with Canonical, but now it has been extended. In fact, Canonical will create a new Ubuntu distribution that will run on the LinuxONE and z Systems, and IBM will contribute back to the community with the single largest amount of mainframe code. In fact, IBM has a long history with Linux, and it was one of the big companies that used Linux for its mainframe, more than 15 years ago.

Canonical and IBM have been working together for some time now but not at this scale. The new partnership will ensure that Ubuntu make its presence felt on more systems out there, but this time in the cloud and secure enterprise servers.

IBM will enable open source and industry tools

The fact that IBM has decided to rely even more on open source tools is a testament to their quality. It takes a lot for such a big company to rely on open source for its future, but they must feel it's the way forward.

"IBM will enable open source and industry tools and software including Apache Spark, Node.js, MongoDB, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and Chef on z Systems to provide clients with choice and flexibility for hybrid cloud deployments. SUSE, which provides Linux distribution for the mainframe, will now support KVM, giving clients a new hypervisor option. Canonical and IBM also announced plans to create an Ubuntu distribution for LinuxONE and 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," reads the official announcement.

The new partnership was revealed during LinuxCon North America 2015, which started today and will end on August 19.