New Linux Foundation Members Advance Open Source In Enterprise Computing

 Allwinner Technology, Datto, LINBIT and Nutanix Leverage Open Source To Expand Access to Cloud, Hyperconverged Datacenters and Web-Scale Computing

San Francisco, June 10, 2015 — The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux and collaborative development, today announced that Allwinner Technology, Datto, LINBIT, and Nutanix are joining the organization.

Commodity hardware, low-power processors, virtualization and a reliable operating system like Linux are in high demand as companies embrace cloud, web-scale computing and high-performance computing. Major growth in trends such as mobile, edge and networked computing create ongoing challenges for collecting, storing, protecting and analyzing ever-escalating levels of data. However, Linux, running on devices, desktops, servers, clouds and modern supercomputers, is always evolving. For example, today’s new members are driving changes in hyperconverged data centers, chip design, disaster recovery and data replication.

More information about the newest Linux Foundation members:

Allwinner Technology, founded in 2007 in Zhuhai, China, is a leading fabless semiconductor design company.  The company designs integrated circuits and turnkey solutions for connected mobile electronics, home entertainment, video security, and IoT devices.  Allwinner’s products have been used by multi-national brands and ODMs worldwide in applications like consumer tablet PCs, industrial and retail tablet PCs, OTT set-up boxes, IP cameras, smart digital appliances, Linux development boards, home gateways, robotics, Wi-Fi speakers, gaming consoles, automotive ADAS systems, and more.

“Allwinner is joining the Linux Foundation to support Linux and to improve what we see as two important open source software development capabilities: collaboration and compliance,” said Jack Lee, Chief Marketing Officer, Allwinner Technology.  “These two concepts are critical yet difficult to master for new Linux community entrants like ourselves.”

Datto is a provider of comprehensive data backup, recovery and business continuity solutions with more than 5 million customers and 8,000 partners worldwide. With its total data protection platform, business data is protected everywhere it resides, whether on-premise, in virtualized environments, in the cloud, and in software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, including Salesforce, Google Apps, and more.      

“Linux is the bedrock of modern data center and cloud computing environments for a number of industries Datto serves, from financial services and healthcare to legal and manufacturing,” said Robert Gibbons, Chief Technology Officer, Datto. “We believe in the power of open source to deliver efficient, widespread innovation for our company and customers. As members we’ll be at the forefront of the Linux community, while improving Datto’s hybrid cloud solution for efficient backup and disaster recovery.”

LINBIT supports and maintains the open source high availability and disaster recovery software Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRBD®). Utilizing existing Linux infrastructure, LINBIT’s server mirroring technology is flexible enough to work with every application, database, filesystem, and virtualization platform for data protection and up-time. Now the de facto software for high-availability clusters, DRBD was accepted into the Linux mainline kernel in 2009, making it available to nearly every Linux distribution.

“Linux is at the crux of our products and services so a partnership with the Linux Foundation was an obvious next step for us,” said Philipp Reisner, CEO and Chief Developer at LINBIT. “We are committed to Linux and will continue to actively contribute to it, enabling affordable replicated storage for all.”

Nutanix delivers invisible infrastructure for next-generation enterprise computing, elevating IT to focus on the applications and services that power their business. The company’s software-driven X Computing Platform natively converges compute, virtualization and storage into a single solution to drive simplicity in the datacenter. Using Nutanix, customers benefit from predictable performance and linear scalability.

“Nutanix is committed to giving customers the flexibility of virtualization platforms on which to run their applications. The Nutanix hyperconverged solution takes a hypervisor-agnostic approach to delivering storage services, and provides a compelling pay-as-you-grow infrastructure platform for virtualizing server workloads on KVM,” said Howard Ting, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Nutanix. “We have joined The Linux Foundation to continue our productive collaboration with the rich ecosystem and learn from and contribute to the community.”

“Linux evolves much more rapidly than any other OS and diversifies faster,” said Amanda McPherson, Chief Marketing Officer at The Linux Foundation. “No other operating system has jumped to new platforms, new workloads, and new architectures so quickly. As a result, we continually add new members who are advancing new features and functionality at a very rapid clip. This keeps Linux vibrant and flexible enough for a wide variety of platforms, applications and computing environments.”

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux and collaborative software development. Founded in 2000, the organization sponsors the work of Linux creator Linus Torvalds and promotes, protects and advances the Linux operating system and collaborative software development by marshaling the resources of its members and the open source community. The Linux Foundation provides a neutral forum for collaboration and education by hosting Collaborative Projects, Linux conferences, including LinuxCon, and generating original research and content that advances the understanding of Linux and collaborative software development. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

# # #

Trademarks: The Linux Foundation, Linux Standard Base, MeeGo, Tizen, and Yocto Project are trademarks of The Linux Foundation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds.