1st April 2020: Canonical, the publisher of Ubuntu, today announces Managed Apps - enabling enterprises to have their apps deployed and operated by Canonical as a fully managed service. At launch, Canonical will cover ten widely used cloud-native database and LMA (logging, monitoring and alerting) apps on multi-cloud Kubernetes but also on virtual machines across bare-metal, public and private cloud. Managed Apps free DevOps teams to focus on delivering business value and away from time-consuming management tasks, at a predictable cost.

Canonical will manage databases including MySQL, InfluxDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and ElasticSearch, the NFV management and orchestration application, Open Source Mano, and the event streaming platform, Kafka. App reliability can be assured with Canonical's Managed apps service covering demand-based scaling, high availability for fault tolerance, security patching and updates. Managed Apps are backed by SLAs for uptime, 24/7 break/fix response, and organisations can monitor their app's health through an integrated LMA stack and dashboard. This stack includes Grafana, Prometheus and Graylog and is also available as a standalone managed service.

"As organisations increasingly move to a cloud-native approach, they can be slowed down by spending too much time on the underlying management of their cloud and its applications," said Stephan Fabel, Director of Product at Canonical. "Our Managed Apps give them the freedom to focus on business priorities, with the confidence that their apps are reliably maintained, secure and can scale to production needs."

Managed Apps allow DevOps teams to eliminate the complexity in maintaining their infrastructure. Whether a start-up or large enterprise, organisations can accelerate the deployment and provisioning of their mission-critical apps through Canonical's managed service. In addition, by utilising Canonical's technical expertise, organisations can fill skills gaps and reduce the cost required to employ app-specific specialists for time-consuming management tasks, whilst being assured of 24/7, global coverage.

To ensure apps remain performant at critical times, Canonical Managed Apps offer full lifecycle management including resource-scaling based on changes in demand, as well as offering high availability by default. Further, with security and IT risk an ever-present concern, organisations can be assured in Canonical's managed services that have MSPAlliance CloudVerify certification* - which is equivalent to SOC 2 Type2, ISO 27001 / ISO 27002, and GDPR compliance. 

By covering ten of the most widely used open source apps, and with plans to expand further, Canonical's Managed Apps remove the need for enterprises to contract with multiple vendors. Aggregating all cloud applications under one vendor improves performance accountability and provides the assurance of one SLA to manage the estate. All Managed Apps customers also benefit from support for their underlying infrastructure, as their subscription includes Ubuntu Advantage for Infrastructure, covering all aspects of open infrastructure including Ubuntu, Kubernetes, OpenStack, Ceph and more.

IT teams can be assured of Canonical's expertise whether they have a multi-cloud or hybrid cloud strategy. Managed Apps cover app workloads running on Ubuntu across Kubernetes, OpenStack, VMWare and the major public clouds.

*Final certification due April 2020.

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.