So Canonical, which is associated with Linux on the desktop, hired RedMonk to count noses last November and December and RedMonk posted a questionnaire on Canonical's web site geared to Ubuntu Server users and almost 7,000 of them responded and the findings reportedly confirm that Ubuntu is being "widely used in the most common workloads (web, print, file, database and mail servers) and that it is considered mission-critical by most respondents."

Apparently Ubuntu's also kicked around as a platform for cloud infrastructures and virtualization, not that it's made it to production much.

So now Microsoft, Red Hat and Novell know Canonical's ambitions. Somehow we doubt Microsoft will break a sweat considering its surrendered little territory to Ubuntu.

RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady said the only surprise was the breadth of workloads Ubuntu is servicing. "Far from being relegated to a niche role, the distribution is being leveraged for a variety of enterprise tasks, from the mundane to the mission-critical."

Canonical said the survey was a "useful straw poll to see if we are making good choices that businesses want to use [like the KVM default]. It is a positive reinforcement."

Since Ubuntu is "mission-critical," respondents figure simple upgrades, package management, hardware support, security and the lifecycle of the product are kinda important, which would make sense. And the research also suggests that users intend rolling out more Ubuntu Servers in the coming months, which should warm Canonical's heart.

Apparently larger companies with 1,000+ employees use Ubuntu in clustering, batch processing, systems management and data mining more than smaller businesses, because they have more of a requirement for these kinds of workloads. There's also a small spike in larger enterprises using Ubuntu for development and testing. However, more small concerns answered the survey than big ones.

See www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/surveyresults for all of the results.

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