Canonical has added another option to their ever-increasing list of enterprise support options. Businesses requiring frequent support may pay for access to a Premium Service Engineer, an Ubuntu expert who works with the company’s existing team to keep the company’s Ubuntu installations running smoothly.

Ubuntu Premium Service Engineers, as opposed to more traditional Ubuntu support plans, gives businesses a single person to contact, who will already know how the servers and desktops are set up in advance of any help being needed. This type of support does not come at a cheap price, though. The Register reports that access to an Ubuntu PSE will cost $50,000 per year, compared to only a few hundred for some of Canonical’s support offerings.

Still, PSEs offer an extremely valuable resource of businesses: a person with specific Ubuntu training. Most IT people are trained primarily in Windows, particularly when it comes to supporting desktops. Paying for a PSE basically givces you a staff member who has Ubuntu training. The only significant difference is that PSEs will not usually be on-site, preventing them from actively managing computers.

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