Canonical launches enhanced GSI partner programme, bringing scalability and automation to modernise enterprise IT deployments

15 July 2020: Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, today announces the launch of its enhanced Global System Integrator (GSI) Programme. Alongside new partnership benefits, it includes resell and integration opportunities for the entirety of Canonical’s secure, open source portfolio for the data centre, multi-cloud, edge and IoT. GSIs can now drive increased revenue by building customer solutions on an automated and scalable platform that accelerates time to market, decreases customer OPEX and delivers IT modernisation to their enterprise clients.

“GSIs are at the forefront of bringing digital transformation to the enterprise in the form of best-fit solutions around AI, multi-cloud, high performance computing (HPC), IoT and intelligent automation. Our re-designed programme helps them to deliver this to customers quickly, securely and with better economics over a deployment’s lifetime,” said Regis Paquette, VP of Alliances at Canonical. “GSIs increasingly need to recommend, incorporate and deliver open source technologies to build bespoke solutions for enterprises while addressing their complex IT requirements. With this GSI programme, Canonical makes that process easy for them.”

A full-stack partner with open source and automation expertise

The modular nature of Canonical’s portfolio provides GSIs consulting and integration options with the freedom to work across multiple IT environments, workloads, vendors and legacy infrastructure. GSIs can achieve reduced IT delivery times by accelerating deployments that normally take months down to just hours.

Deployment complexity is simplified through Canonical’s tools from bare metal to the application layer. This includes DevOps automation of apps and infrastructure, cloud style provisioning of physical servers and apps that can be built, published and updated remotely without the need for manual intervention. With such tooling, GSIs can focus on configuration reuse, develop their organisational knowledge and thus, increase customer satisfaction through quality deployments and improved day-2 operations.

Dedicated GSI support and incentives

Canonical is rolling out additional benefits as part of the programme. GSIs can take advantage of competitive pricing discounts upon deal registration and aggregated volume discounts across their combined customer base. Technical teams can be certified both for first level support and delivery of all Canonical services. Canonical will also assign dedicated resources to GSIs including account management, sales, engineering and marketing support, in addition to a comprehensive partner portal.

As part of the programme, Canonical will engage with GSIs to train their sales and consulting teams on the value of Canonical’s full suite, identify integration opportunities with the GSIs own offering and work together on specific customer requests such as strategic proof of concepts.

Multi-cloud by design

Partnering with Canonical can drive GSIs’ businesses across all enterprise IT initiatives. With Ubuntu as the number one guest operating system on all major public clouds and Canonical a founding member of the OpenStack Foundation, it is ideally suited for multi-cloud deployments. Charmed OpenStack offers cost-efficient private cloud infrastructure with reduced day-2 operational costs. In addition, Ubuntu is the reference platform for Kubernetes on all major public clouds, and delivers pure upstream Charmed Kubernetes for the delivery of highly portable containerised workloads for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Advanced proposition for IoT and smart cities

From smart cities to robotics and industrial machines to energy, Canonical’s IoT offering enables GSIs to provide secure, scalable and future proof solutions, both as an offering to their clients and to integrate within their own platforms. Canonical’s IoT app stores can host and distribute software to in-field devices and provide automated lifecycle management, creating ease of service and support management for GSIs.

Deep stance on security, enterprise grade support

Ubuntu has been built on a foundation of industry leading security practices. Intel, AMD and IBM all trust Canonical to deliver hardware controlled security from Linux, to OpenStack and containers. Ubuntu has also achieved government certifications and auditor compliance for FedRamp, FISMA and HITECH awarded by NIST, DISA and CIS.

Canonical’s Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure enterprise-grade support provides up to ten years of security updates, packaged in a holistic pricing model.

Learn more and register for Canonical’s GSI programme here.

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About Canonical

Canonical is the publisher of Ubuntu, the OS for most public cloud workloads as well as the emerging categories of smart gateways, self-driving cars and advanced robots. Canonical provides enterprise security, support and services to commercial users of Ubuntu. Established in 2004, Canonical is a privately held company.