Mark Shuttleworth announced last Friday that Ubuntu 9.10 will be named Karmic Koala, and also presented what we should expect from the future version of Ubuntu:

• the desktop version will have a new look (more beautiful)

• on the server side as everybody these days Ubuntu’s future will be targeting the “cloud”. They will have official supported Ubuntu Amazon EC2 AMIs, as ready-to-run appliances.  Also they will support the open source project Eucalyptus that enables you to create an EC2-style cloud using your own hardware. Eucalyptus, will be included in ubuntu repos allowing users to build and manage private clouds more easily.

For full details: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-February/000536.html