Samsung Electronics announced Thursday that it has agreed to acquire public and private cloud vendor Joyent for an undisclosed sum. With Joyent’s cloud technology, Samsung will now have access to its own cloud platform capable of supporting its growing lineup of mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-based software and services. The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions.
Joyent will operate as a standalone company under Samsung and continue providing cloud infrastructure and software services to its customers.
As smartphones and connected-devices have taken hold across the world, cloud computing has become fundamental in providing users with reliable services and experiences on their devices. With positions in both mobile and IoT, this acquisition represents Samsung’s commitment to provide a seamless user experience to millions of customers.
Joyent’s technology will strengthen this position, while allowing Samsung to scale its own cloud infrastructure and services as it continues to innovate with new software and technologies.
Through this acquisition, Joyent’s talented team of technologists, including CEO Scott Hammond, CTO Bryan Cantrill, and Bill Fine, vice president of product will join Samsung to work on company-wide cloud initiatives.
In addition, Joyent’s combination of container-native infrastructure, object storage, server-less computing, and Node.js expertise is ideal to help Samsung meet the needs of its customers. Samsung will immediately benefit from having direct access to Joyent’s technology, leadership and talent. Likewise, Joyent will be able to take advantage of Samsung’s scale of business, global footprint, financial muscle and its brand power.
Based upon this foundation, and Joyent’s products and services, including Triton, its containers as a service solution, and its Manta scalable object storage solution, the San Francisco based company will now continue to play a role in the evolution of cloud computing, along side plays such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google.
The two companies will jointly set to differentiate from other public cloud operators by making software available for operators to run their own. Joyent feels strongly for such a move, and confirmed Samsung’s participation to keeping the platform open source, after having open sourced its stack eighteen months ago—and having seen first-hand not only the technical but also the commercial benefits of being open source. With Samsung’s support, the Joyent acquisition offers a different level of scale that allows adoption of proven technologies to tackle a new scope of problems, and drive another generation of innovation.
