Samsung buys Joyent to build a cloud of its own

Samsung SmartThings Hub is just one of many plays by the South Korean company

Credit: Mikael Ricknas

Samsung Electronics is acquiring U.S. cloud services company Joyent as it builds its services business around mobile devices and the Internet of Things.

The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Joyent will operate as a standalone subsidiary under the new dispensation and continue providing cloud infrastructure and software services to its customers.

Samsung said Thursday the acquisition would give the smartphone maker access to its own cloud platform to support it in the areas of mobile, IoT and cloud-based software and services.

The South Korean company said it had evaluated a number of providers of public and private cloud infrastructure but zeroed in on Joyent in San Francisco as it saw “an experienced management team with deep domain expertise and a robust cloud technology validated by some of the largest Fortune 500 customers.”

Joyent’s key executives, including CEO Scott Hammond, CTO Bryan Cantrill, and Bill Fine, vice president of product, will join Samsung and work on company-wide cloud initiatives.

With Samsung as a key customer, Joyent hopes to achieve the scale required to compete effectively in the “large, rapidly growing and fiercely competitive cloud computing market,” Hammond wrote in a blog post. Joyent competes with giants like Google, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. “As a result of this acquisition, Samsung will become an anchor tenant for Joyent’s Triton and Manta solutions,” Hammond wrote.

Triton is Joyent’s container-as-a-service platform while Manta is its object storage technology. Samsung plans to use Triton and Manta as the server-side foundationfor a new generation of mobile- and IoT-based application, according to Cantrill.

Samsung has been progressively expanding in the IoT market including through acquisitions. In August 2014, for example, it acquired smart home appliances company SmartThings in the U.S.

John Ribeiro Bangalore Correspondent

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for the IDG News Service.
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