Skip to footer

Cloud computing: Can start-up trump Amazon in the cloud?

Cloud computing start-up Joyent has $85 million in venture funding and a new deal with Telefónica to compete with Amazon in cloud computing services.

|
Amazon.com/AP/File
This screen shot shows a page from the Amazon Cloud Player, which offers up to 5 gigabytes of storage for free. Joyent, a cloud computing start-up, intends to go head to head with Amazon.com in providing cloud computing services.
  • By Sean Ludwig VentureBeat

Cloud computing startup Joyent has raised a humongous $85 million round of funding, which will help the company with its plan of out-innovating Amazon in cloud computing technology.

Joyent provides infrastructure cloud computing services for customers like LinkedIn, THQ, Gilt Groupe and Kabam. The company’s core offering will now be enhanced with a wide-ranging partnership with Telefónica Digital, the global business division of London-based telecommunications company Telefónica. With the new partnership, Joyent will be able to bring its services to more countries thanks to Telefónica data centers throughout Europe and Latin America.

Joyent CEO David Young enjoys colorfully differentiating his company from his largest competitor Amazon, by far the largest provider of cloud computing services in the world. Young describes Amazon’s cloud computing technology as a “junk yard” where all sorts of technologies have been “taped together.”

“Amazon is the Kodak of the cloud,” Young told VentureBeat. “I don’t want to dump on Amazon, but I just don’t think you can look to a book seller and grocery store for cloud innovation. On the other hand, we’re building a cloud alliance around the globe.”

The new massive round was led by Weather Investment II Group, with Telefónica Digital, El Dorado Ventures, Epic Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Intel Capital, and Liberty Global also participating. Joyent’s last funding round occurred in Sept. 2010 and totaled $15 million. In its history, the company has raised around $115 million.

San Francisco-based Joyent was founded in 2004 and has about 150 employees. It also has offices in Vancouver, Singapore and Geneva. The company plans to announce other “exciting” partnerships in the near future that will enable the company’s services in even more countries.

See also:

TRUSTe secures $15M for increased online privacy managment 
SeatGeek partners with Hearst, powering ticket search in their major sports markets

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Cloud computing: Can start-up trump Amazon in the cloud?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0124/Cloud-computing-Can-start-up-trump-Amazon-in-the-cloud
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe