--- title: A year in the Cloud description: 'The Ubuntu Cloud Zeitgeist: a year in retrospective The new year is a perfect occasion to reflect on the road we just covered and how far we have come just in this past year. We opened 2014 shipping the new Ubuntu Server 14.04 on April 17, our third LTS release designed for the cloud.  Including […]' url: https://canonical.com/blog/a-year-in-the-cloud?format=md --- 1. [Blog](https://canonical.com/blog) 2. Article --- [Canonical](https://canonical.com/blog/author/canonical "More about Canonical") 9 January 2015 # A year in the Cloud [cloud](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/cloud) [CPC](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/cpc) [Landscape](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/landscape) [Server](https://canonical.com/blog/tag/server) --- Share the article *The Ubuntu Cloud Zeitgeist: a year in retrospective* The new year is a perfect occasion to reflect on the road we just covered and how far we have come just in this past year. We opened 2014 shipping the new Ubuntu Server 14.04 on April 17, [our third LTS release designed for the cloud](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2014/04/15/ubuntu-14-04-lts-the-cloud-platform-of-choice/ "14.04 is the Cloud Platform of Choice").  Including five years of support for OpenStack Ice House, it was shown [time](https://www.openstack.org/summit/openstack-summit-atlanta-2014/session-videos/presentation/2014-spring-user-survey-results-and-feedback "Atlanta User Survey (video)") and [again](http://a4.res.cloudinary.com/hqq9ey1mh/image/upload/c_limit,w_793/v1414983251/txytwdgmtwla8jrxnlbk.png "Paris user survey (blog)") to be the most popular OS platform for OpenStack. We did not stop there: alongside a [major set of improvements](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2014/04/17/whats-new-in-ubuntu-server-14-04-lts/ "What's new in 14.04") we included Docker, arguably the hottest cloud infrastructure technology available today – and one where Ubuntu [is six times as popular a platform as the runner up](https://registry.hub.docker.com/_/ubuntu/).  Not satisfied with that milestone, the Server team saw [a million Vagrant installs in under nine months](https://vagrantcloud.com/boxes/search). Key author and OpenStack Community leader [Kevin Jackson](http://www.openstack.org/blog/author/kev/ "Kevin Jackson") remarked: > Ubuntu has helped establish OpenStack as the leading open cloud platform today and the Ubuntu Cloud Archive is the default way for many to get the latest stable release of OpenStack But being the cloud platform of choice was not enough, and continuing our tradition of [leadership in the container space](http://t.co/CFxUHj8bcv "Plumbers LXC presentation - Google, Parallels, Canonical") with Google and Parallels,  the team rounded up the year with the announcement of the [LXD container hypervisor](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2014/11/04/lxd-the-linux-container-daemon/ "Dustin Kirkland explains LXD in 2 minutes"), and demonstrating container live migration at the [OpenStack summit in Paris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrHW7Vvbie4 "Tycho demonstrates live container migration (video)"), as well as porting the Snappy technology from Ubuntu Phone to the cloud, with the announcement of [Ubuntu Core in December](http://www.zdnet.com/article/snappy-ubuntu-challenges-coreos-and-project-atomic-on-lightweight-cloud-servers/ "SJVN's coverage of Ubuntu Core"). Live on a stage in front of the 4,000 Stackers assembled, Mark Shuttleworth demonstrated streamlined installing of OpenStack using an early release of the OpenStack Autopilot at the Atlanta summit, where we also learned that [five out of the six featured Superusers are running Ubuntu](https://twitter.com/0xF2/status/466227314674921472 "Mark quoted on Stage"). The [OpenStack Autopilot](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2014/11/06/putting-your-openstack-on-autopilot/ "Landscape In Action: Putting OpenStack On Autopilot") moved into [public beta](http://ubuntu.com/autopilot "Autopilot download ") as part of [Landscape](http://landscape.canonical.com "Landscape") later in the fall, effectively dropping the cost of experimenting with OpenStack to zero, as you can now deploy a full best-practice OpenStack cloud during your lunch break – [and do it twice if you hurry](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCUoPmFGvCI "Autopilot Demo: Installing OpenStack in 15 minutes").  Encoding the best practices of Canonical’s consulting team into a programmatic architect, the Autopilot sets a new standard in OpenStack automation and  made [SJVN](http://www.zdnet.com/article/canonical-officially-unveils-its-openstack-distro/ "Canonical Distribution announcement") comment: > Today, you know Canonical best for its Ubuntu Linux distribution. Tomorrow you may know it best for its OpenStack cloud distribution. Certified Public Cloud confirmed its position as the company’s fastest growing commercial program, maintaining relationships with all our strategic partners including Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure to bring a reliable, fast and supported Ubuntu experience to customers on the world’s largest public clouds. Doubling partners in the past year, the Public Cloud Program welcomed its first European partners in [BrightBox](http://insights.ubuntu.com/2014/07/16/canonical-welcomes-brightbox-to-its-certified-public-cloud-programme-as-first-european-partner/ "Welcoming Brightbox ") and [CloudSigma](http://insights.ubuntu.com/2014/10/15/cloudsigma-joins-ubuntu-certified-public-cloud/ "CloudSigma joins"), and welcomed [Google](https://insights.ubuntu.com/2014/11/03/certified-ubuntu-images-available-on-google-cloud-platform/ "Google enters Beta") to the raucous applause of those assembled at Google Cloud Platform Live in early November.   The team was in attendance at Amazon re:Invent later that month, and we let them do the talking in the [featured video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6raxaxvEIHs&feature=youtu.be "AWS re:invent recap"). *We are just getting started. [Join us](http://www.canonical.com/careers "Ubuntu Careers") in the year ahead!* [Get in touch Interested in running Ubuntu in your organization?](https://ubuntu.com/about/contact-us/form) ## Sign up for our newsletter Get the latest Canonical news and updates in your inbox. Work email: \*I agree to receive information about Canonical's products and services. By submitting this form, I confirm that I have read and agree to [Canonical's Privacy Policy](https://canonical.com/legal/dataprivacy). Sign up ## Share on --- ## Related posts [### Managing Ubuntu on bare metal at scale](https://canonical.com/blog/managing-ubuntu-on-bare-metal-at-scale) Modern infrastructure teams are expected to deliver cloud-like speed, consistency, and reliability, even when their workloads run on physical servers. Bare metal remains... 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