Joyent to Compete with Google Apps
Posted at 2:37am EST on 01/15/2009
Cloud computing is becoming a hotter and hotter topic everyday. Cloud computing, cloud hosting, and everything else in the cloud. This makes me really glad that I don’t live in Seattle because you’d always be in a cloud.
Joyent Inc. has acquired a company called Reasonably Smart.
Here is a blip of the announcement from their blog.
This acquisition comes at an important point in time for Joyent. We’ve just finished our best year, ever. Revenue doubled in 2008 from 2007 even as the economy continues to tank. Customers are moving spend from cap-ex to op-ex and Joyent products are ideally situated for this trend. However, more and more customers are expecting auto-scale from their cloud vendors and this acquisition allows Joyent to respond to those demands.
Reasonably Smart is an auto-scaling platform-as-a-service; it is a direct, open-source competitor to Google App Engine. We believe the future of cloud computing is found in open, transparent platforms that allow customers to move between clouds easily, if desired. Unfortunately, that is not the case for most cloud vendors today. This acquisition underscores Joyent’s commitment to customers and their interests in cloud computing.
This acquisition also underscores a bet that Javascript will become the language of scale for the web. When I talk of scale, I don’t only mean “big” but also “very small” since most applications developed are used by a handful of people from time-to-time. The platform will support other languages in the coming months, but we feel confident that Javascript is a very competent first start.
I want to welcome James Duncan and Bryan Bogensberger to Joyent. James will continue to develop the platform. He has been a champion and contributor of open source for many years and has experience in building platforms at enormous scale. Bryan will be serving as Joyent’s VP of Marketing. Jason Hoffman and I knew they both were great fits for Joyent since they like to have fun and they are passionate about doing what is right for customers.
The Reasonably Smart platform is off-line for a couple months while we integrate it with Joyent backend services. Meanwhile, please sign up at http://reasonablysmart.com (running on Joyent Accelerators) to allow us to keep you informed of progress.
Joyent isn’t the mega-player like Google, but with the right functionality, marketing, and execution, Joyent could certainly become a mega-player to compete with Google.
