Canonical (company)


Canonical Ltd. is a privately-held computer software company based in London, England. It was founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects. Canonical employs staff in more than 70 countries and maintains offices in London, Austin, Boston, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Tokyo and the Isle of Man.

Projects

Canonical Ltd. has created and continues to back several projects. Principally these are free and open-source software or tools designed to improve collaboration between free software developers and contributors. Some projects require a Contributor License Agreement to be signed.

Open-source software

In 2007, Canonical launched an International online shop selling support services and Ubuntu-branded goods; later in 2008 it expanded that with a United States-specific shop designed to reduce shipment times. At the same time, the word Ubuntu was trademarked in connection with clothing and accessories.
In a Guardian interview in May 2008, Shuttleworth said that Canonical's business model was service provision and that Canonical was not yet close to profitability. Canonical stated that it would wait three to five years to become profitable. Shuttleworth regarded Canonical as positioning itself as demand for services related to free software rose. This strategy has been compared to Red Hat's business strategies in the 1990s. In an early-2009 New York Times article, Shuttleworth said that Canonical's revenue was "creeping" towards, the company's break-even point.
Canonical achieved a small operating profit of $281,000 in 2009, but until 2017 struggled to maintain financial solvency and took a major financial hit from the development of Unity and Ubuntu Touch, leading to an operating loss of $21.6 million for the fiscal year 2013. The company reported an operating profit of $2 million in 2017 after shutting down the Unity development team and laying off nearly 200 employees. The company now plans to focus on its server and professional support products and services, which have proved to be most profitable. Through this, Canonical plans to maintain solvency and achieve long-term profitability. In 2022, Canonical UK Limited made a profit of £0.52m on revenues of £14.31m.
Canonical reported a revenue of $175M in 2021. In 2023, the company reported a revenue of $251M.

Subsidiaries

  • Canonical Group Ltd is located in London.
  • Canonical USA Inc. is located in Boston, Massachusetts and Austin, Texas.
  • Canonical China Ltd is located in Shanghai and Beijing.
  • Canonical Ltd Taiwan Branch is located in Taipei.
  • Canonical Limited is located in Isle of Man and Tokyo.
  • Canonical Brasil Ltd is located in São Paulo.
  • Canonical Canada Ltd is located in Montreal.

    Employees

Canonical has more than 1200 employees. The head office is in London on the 5th Floor of 3 More London Riverside, More London. Previous office locations include the 5th Floor of the Blue Fin Building, Southwark Street, and the 27th floor of Millbank Tower. In the summer of 2006, Canonical opened an office in Montreal to house its global support and services operation. Taipei 101 is also home to a Canonical office. There was formerly an OEM team in Lexington, Massachusetts, United States.

Current

Notable current employees of Canonical include:
  • Mark Shuttleworth, CEO and founder of the Ubuntu project, former Debian maintainer of Apache and founder of Thawte Consulting, CEO until March 2010 and from July 2017 to present
  • Jane Silber, Board of Directors, formerly CEO ; formerly COO and leader of the Ubuntu One project

    Past

Notable past employees: