"MAAS makes it easy to set up the hardware on which to deploy any service that needs to scale up and down dynamically -- a cloud being just one example. It lets you provision your servers dynamically, just like cloud instances -- only in this case, they're whole physical nodes. 'Add another node to the Hadoop cluster, and make sure it has at least 16GB RAM' is as easy as asking for it," he wrote.

Ubuntu's main enterprise backer, Canonical, has been touting its upcoming release of Version 12.04 as a watershed moment for the operating system's role in the enterprise. However, established open-source business powerhouse Red Hat -- which recently announced that it had become the first billion-dollar open-source company -- looks to be stiff competition indeed.

Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.

in Network World's Software section.