Canonical offers humans to Ubuntu-using enterprise

Canonical has introduced a new class of support for enterprises using Ubuntu - the Premium Service Engineer or PSE. Describing PSEs as 'virtual team members' for an enterprise's internal Ubuntu support, the company says that they'll provide direct contact between corporations and the Ubuntu development community, and a path for escalation of 'more complex problems', such as those that occur in cutting-edge situations involving virtualisation and cloud computing.

PSEs will also report to companies on Ubuntu developments and strategy, offer bi-weekly contact, multi-vendor co-ordination and help with deployment planning.

At $50k a year (£30k) you probably won't be using them to install a printer driver or configure wireless access, but if you're building a distributed data centre with lights-out management and comprehensive metrics, then these Ubu-men and Ubu-women sound like just the job.