Canonical adds advanced Ubuntu service and support offering

Premium Service Engineer provides support for mission-critical and complex Ubuntu environments

Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu project, announced today an advanced service and support offering that gives large enterprises with complex IT environments a highly-skilled, dedicated Canonical support professional.

Premium Service Engineer (PSE), a new level of support for large enterprises, offers a single point of contact for Canonical's large customers – enabling a faster response time and faster issue resolution. PSEs have access to all levels of support, including Canonical's platform engineers.

“Having a Premium Service Engineer has been vital to getting the level of support we require to improve our operational infrastructure.” said Chief Technology Officer Antonio José Sáenz from Isotrol, a pioneering customer of the PSE service. “As we are involved in the delivery of many open-source projects and ourselves operate a large Ubuntu and Debian server and desktop environment, being able to rely on a dedicated Ubuntu expert from Canonical reduces the pressure of supporting high-profile open-source projects externally and internally.”

“Familiarity with the customer's environment is key to providing dedicated support,” said Steve George, Director of Corporate Services at Canonical. “As Canonical believes in providing service consistency, we assign the same technical consultant who assisted you with your initial deployment to also act as your Premium Service Engineer. This ensures that your Premium Service Engineer has an in-depth understanding of your requirements from the start.”

PSEs work proactively to support Canonical's enterprise customers – becoming virtual team members who collaborate with IT/IS staff. They conduct regular technical and service reviews, transferring best-practice knowledge, and helping enterprises optimise their Ubuntu environments.

“One of the reasons we decided to engage a Premium Service Engineer from Canonical was to have an open-source Ubuntu expert on-hand on a continuous basis to help and ensure all our business units equally benefited from operational best practices,” said Saenz from Isotrol.

PSEs also act as the voice of the enterprise within Canonical's platform and development areas, ensuring that new Ubuntu releases continue to meet the needs of enterprises.

About Canonical Corporate Services

Canonical's Corporate Services group provides support, implementation and training services to organisations of all sizes. Comprised of Linux and open-source experts in server, desktop and cloud technologies, the Corporate Services group works with Canonical customers to help deliver all the benefits of the Ubuntu platform.

Pricing and Availability

Information and pricing for the PSE service is available at http://www.ubuntu.com/support/services/pse

About Canonical

Canonical provides engineering, online and professional services to Ubuntu partners and customers worldwide. As the founder of the Ubuntu project, Canonical is committed to the production and support of Ubuntu – an ever-popular and fast-growing open-source operating system. It aims to ensure that Ubuntu is available to every organisation and individual on servers, desktops, laptops and netbooks. Canonical partners with computer hardware manufacturers to certify Ubuntu, provides migration, deployment, support and training services to businesses, and offers online services direct to end users. Canonical also builds and maintains collaborative, open-source development tools to ensure that organisations and individuals can participate fully in innovations within the open-source community. For more information, please visit www.canonical.com.