Canonical was doing well with Ubuntu and cloud and container-related technologies, such as Juju, LXD, and Metal-as-a-Service (MaaS).

In addition, its OpenStack and Kubernetes software stacks, according to Shuttleworth, are growing by leaps and bounds on both the public and private cloud.

He said that in the last year, Ubuntu cloud growth had been 70 percent on the private cloud and 90 percent on the public cloud.

"Ubuntu has been gaining more customers on the big five public clouds."

Canonical's attempt to make Unity the universal interface for desktops, tablets, and smartphones had failed and while Shuttleworth was personally invested in this project it was not viable when you had an IPO looming.

Other steps are likely as the company works out what steps we need to take towards an IPO.

That means focusing on Canonical's most profitable lines.

“Ubuntu will never die because it is the default platform on cloud computing. Juju, MaaS, and OpenStack are nearly unstoppable. We need to work out more of our IoT path. At the same time, we had to cut out those parts that could not meet an investors' needs. The immediate work is get all parts of the company profitable," Shuttleworth said.