What is Ubuntu used for?

The launch of Ubuntu in 2004 was a step-change for everyday users and developers everywhere. Nicknamed “Ubuntu Linux” in its early days, to differentiate it from its various cousins in the Linux world, it has since lost the need for its surname and grown to become a powerful force.

Besides being used by millions of home users, Ubuntu is widely used in the business world. As developers have become a driving force of innovation,  so has Ubuntu. And that’s because developers love Ubuntu – it is ranked as the #1 Linux OS by enterprise developers. The OS comes in multiple variants for use across desktops, servers, public clouds and embedded devices.

This coincides with a landscape in which organizations are more open minded about questioning their current IT setups, which often run on proprietary software. The costs of scaling, legacy issues and security concerns are prompting a rethink – so how do businesses use Linux? And what is Ubuntu used for in business?

In this blog, we’ll run through examples of where Ubuntu is making its mark in both business and the public sector, with examples spanning from servers and the public cloud, to the Internet-of-things (IoT).

The power of support: New Mexico State University

No technology exists in a vacuum, and organizations regularly cite the need for external support as a key consideration when making choices. Proprietary software has an owner to maintain it – but what about open source software? Open source software has publishers. Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, actively maintains Ubuntu and its ecosystem of packages. This is done regularly, with a predictable cadence.

So far, so good. But what makes Ubuntu stand out is community. Having an active community of users who collaborate together to find vulnerabilities and solve problems allows users to chart their own direction. With more eyes on the code, it’s quicker and easier for the community as a whole to spot and patch vulnerabilities – as well as to provide documented guidance for future users looking to avoid an issue. That’s what prompted New Mexico State University to consider using Ubuntu for their compliance needs.

New Mexico State University’s Physical Science Laboratory faced the prospect of their open source operating software (OS) reaching end of life, which coincided with their target of achieving FIPS compliance. As much of their work was with the public sector, this was a critical task. 

The extensive documentation available for Ubuntu made it a solid choice, with troubleshooting often only requiring a web search to find the answer. By opting for Ubuntu Pro, an enterprise support subscription, New Mexico State University extended the long-term support of Ubuntu from 5 years to 10 years, as well as availing themselves of automated hardening tools for compliance. 

“Info on Ubuntu is right there at our fingertips. Anything we need to know is always just a Google search away, so whatever issues we run into are easy to solve.” – Ed Zenisek, IT Manager, NMSU Physical Science Lab

Read the full case study >

Staying secure in the public cloud: LaunchDarkly

According to research by O’Reilly, an American learning company, 67% of organizations use a public cloud – showing that the public cloud has become an integral part of business operations. Keeping your cloud compatible with your wider systems whilst also maintaining strict compliance can feel like being pulled in two directions. By opening the door for them to work with highly regulated clients, Ubuntu proved to be the operating system for LaunchDarkly’s business needs. 

LaunchDarkly is a SaaS (software-as-a-service) provider which delivers an industry-leading feature management platform. They use AWS EC2 to deliver services to customers. In order to serve government clients, they needed to become FedRAMP compliant (a US federal government security standard). 

They selected Ubuntu after discovering that Canonical publishes a FIPS-compatible Ubuntu image for AWS. This enabled them to use Ubuntu to do business securely in a heavily regulated environment. With an Ubuntu Pro subscription, they benefit from 10 years of security patching and compliance hardening and benchmarking tools, allowing them to focus on innovation. 

By using Ubuntu for their compliance needs, LaunchDarkly was able to become the first FedRAMP compliant feature-management platform on the market. 

“It just works. Of all the things that give me trouble and keep me up at night, Ubuntu is not one of them”.

—Patrick Kaeding, Staff Security Engineer, LaunchDarkly

Find out more about LaunchDarkly’s Ubuntu journey >

Forward thinking logistics: Rehrig Pacific

The story of technology in business is very much a security story. A shiny, sleek new technology emerges and your business wants to spring it into action, only to have security rain on your parade. But this is the wrong way of looking at it: successfully combining security and innovation provides you with a competitive advantage and the ability to access highly restricted markets. That’s exactly what Rehrig Pacific achieved by using Ubuntu.

Rehrig Pacific is a US-based industry leader in waste, recycling and supply chain solutions. They have over 100 years of history, but they aren’t looking back. Far from being tied to tradition, they wanted to harness AI to automate the shipment processes they provide to customers. They sought to automate the process of pallet screening, that is, the process of checking a shipment before it goes out to ensure it has the correct items. However, they needed to do this behind customer firewalls and in-line with strict security protocols.

Rehrig Pacific decided that using Ubuntu Core for their devices was the right choice for incorporating AI into their business offering. Ubuntu Core is an embedded flavor of Ubuntu, and it provided a nimble solution that could deliver advanced AI scanning capability with an immutable, minimized attack surface. Ubuntu Core is entirely containerized, meaning that every application is strictly isolated, preventing data exchange and ensuring that packages can be deployed, updated and retired without disrupting the overall system. 

“Adopting Ubuntu Core has helped our engineers mature their thinking in how we deliver scalable enterprise products. It’s enabled us to move from an R&D product to a full-scale enterprise solution.”

—Robert Martin, Vice President of Technology, Rehrig Pacific

Check out the full case study >

Innovative approaches to patient care: BeWell

Advancements in patient care strongly mirror advancements in technology. For patients, this is a welcome development as it means a faster time to triage, treatment or diagnosis. BeWell’s patient self-testing kiosks are a part of this story, enabling faster triage and allowing the deployment of nurses to other tasks.

However, delivering on the promise of technology means making sure that you can continue to draw on the latest innovations with timely, secure updates. As they planned to scale up their offering to more and more hospitals, they needed to be able to roll out updates remotely, without disrupting normal operations. Their customers needed confidence that the devices would be highly performant in the long-term and offer a seamless experience for patients – ensuring that a high standard of medical care could be provided at all times.

By using Ubuntu Core, BeWell was able to create a more seamless patient experience. As an embedded OS created specifically for devices, Ubuntu Core’s containerization provided a stable foundation for BeWell’s applications. Backed by Ubuntu’s long-term support commitment, Canonical provides updates and patching for 10 years, all of which take place remotely and at the right moment. 

“Ubuntu Core gave us the features we were looking for out-of-the-box without making us responsible for them. As a lean company, we need to pick our battles. Taking ownership of the entire OS stack and update delivery wasn’t viable. It would have been a distraction from our product and our core business”.

—Dries Oeyen, Chief Technology Officer, BeWell Innovations

Find out more in the full case study >

Improved collaboration between doctors: Grundium

A seamless patient experience extends beyond the waiting room. Grundium’s story takes us to the lab, where the important diagnostic work takes place. Grundium is a medical device manufacturer which produces high-resolution digital microscopes, known as Ocus® Scanners. The images that these microscopes take are of high enough quality for pathologists in distributed locations to work on them together – eliminating the need for physical sample transfer to request a second opinion. 

Grundium needed an OS that would run smoothly on their specialized hardware, and provide the security needed to meet their customers’ strict compliance requirements. Through Canonical’s partnership with NVIDIA, Ubuntu was already optimized and certified for this card, leading Grundium to use Ubuntu as the underlying OS.

Using an open source OS with such a well developed ecosystem proved to be an advantage for Grundium, who were able to go-to-market more quickly as a result of the maturity of the packages available to them. The logical next step was to subscribe to enterprise-grade security from Canonical through an Ubuntu Pro for Devices subscription. This provides continuous patching for up to 10 years, allowing Grundium’s developers to focus on optimizing their products, rather than compliance. 

“Our customers in the medical industry require a security scan of any technical product they are using. If you don’t have an OS that is continuously patched and maintained, you don’t pass. Ubuntu Pro for Devices ensures that we can meet the requirements of our clients.”  – Kimmo Alanen, Vice President, Grundium

Check out the full story >

Explore how you can do business with Ubuntu

Whatever your field of innovation, the ability to be agile and flexible is a competitive advantage across business and industrial landscapes, where technology underpins the speed and direction of travel. 

If you’re looking for an operating system for your business that is highly-performant across your stack, and has large scale buy-in from developers and security teams alike, then we’d recommend learning more about how Ubuntu can put your business firmly in the driving seat of your technological evolution.

Traditional softwares and operating systems for businesses might provide the comfort of familiarity, but as legacy systems creak, the time is ripe for a new approach that puts businesses and public sector bodies firmly in the driving seat when it comes to development and security.

Find out more about using Ubuntu for your needs >

Further reading

• New Mexico State University Physical Science Laboratory drives agile and compliant federal research with Ubuntu
• LaunchDarkly becomes the first FedRAMP-authorised feature management platform thanks to Ubuntu Pro
• Rehrig Pacific solves an age-old logistics challenge with secure edge AI on Ubuntu Core
• BeWell Innovations enables hospitals to scale up patient self-testing services with Ubuntu Core
• Grundium secures critical systems and improves health outcomes with Ubuntu Pro for Devices