Joyent

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Joyent Inc.
Type Private
Industry Computer Software
Genre Cloud infrastructure
Founded 2004
Key people Henry Wasik (CEO)
Bryan Cantrill (SrVP Engineering)
Products Node.js, SmartOS, Joyent Cloud, Joyent SmartDataCenter
Employees 80 (Aug 2013)
Divisions Cloud Software, Cloud Hosting
Website www.joyent.com

Joyent Inc is a software and services company based in San Francisco, California. The company specializes in application virtualization and cloud computing.

Services

JoyentCloud, Joyent’s hosting unit, is designed to compete with Amazon's EC2 cloud[1] and offers infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) for large enterprises.

This hosting business is active in the segment of online social network game,[2] where it provides services to companies such as THQ,[3] Social Game Universe, and Traffic Marketplace.

The company also hosted Twitter in its early days.[4] Other customers include LinkedIn, Gilt Groupe, and Kabam.[1]

Software

Joyent uses and supports open source projects, including Ruby on Rails,[5] Node.js,[6][7] Illumos and SmartOS, which is its own distribution of Illumos,[1] featuring its port of the KVM Hypervisor for abstracting the software from the hardware, DTrace for troubleshooting and systems monitoring, and the ZFS file system to connect servers to storage systems.[8] The company open-sourced SmartOS in August 2011.[9][10]

Joyent has taken the software stack that evolved over time in the running of their hosted business and is now licensing that software under the name Smart Data Center[1] to large hardware companies such as Dell.[11][12]

History

Joyent was founded in 2004 under the name TextDrive by the Canadian typographer, art director, designer, writer and programmer Dean Allen, the creator of Textile markup, who was looking to create an ideal hosting environment for the content management system he was developing, Textpattern.[13] TextDrive was incorporated in California in May 2004 with Allen as Chief Executive Officer and Jason Hoffman as President and Chief Operating Officer.[14] TextDrive was positioned as "a hosting company run by and for people who love publishing on the web."[15]

TextDrive provided infrastructure support to projects such as Ruby on Rails,[16] WordPress, and TurboGears.[17] The company hosted the high-profile magazine A List Apart,[18] as well as the blogging service WordPress.com. The company also took an early lead fighting comment spam on weblogs.[19]

In November 2005, TextDrive merged with Joyent,[5][17][20] a company working on an online collaboration tool[21] which was demonstrated at the Web 2.0 Conference in October 2005,[22] launched in March 2006[23] and discontinued in August 2011.[24] The company is now focused on cloud computing software and services to service providers.

The company has a history of acquisitions and divestments. In 2009, Joyent acquired Reasonably Smart, a cloud startup company with products based on JavaScript and Git.[25] In 2009, it sold off both Strongspace and Bingodisk to ExpanDrive.[26] In 2010, Joyent purchased LayerBoom, a Vancouver-based startup that provides solutions for managing virtual machines running on Windows and Linux.[27]

Financing

In 2004, TextDrive bootstrapped itself as a hosting company through crowd funding: customers were invited to invest money in exchange for free hosting for the lifetime of the company.[14] TextDrive and, later, Joyent repeated the money-raising procedure a number of times in order to avoid the venture capital market.[28][29] Joyent raised venture capital for the first time in November 2009[30] from Intel and Dell.[31] Joyent's early institutional investors include El Dorado Ventures, Epic Ventures, Peter Thiel (Seed Round),[32] Intel Capital (Series A, B Rounds),[33] Greycroft Partners (Series A, B Rounds),[34] Liberty Global (Series B Round). In January, 2012, Joyent secured a new round of funding totalling $85 million from Weather Investment II, Accelero Capital, and Telefónica Digital.[35]

Lifetime hosting crisis and relaunch of TextDrive

On August 16, 2012, individuals who had provided start-up and development funding to Joyent (and its predecessor, TextDrive) in exchange for lifetime shared hosting accounts with Joyent were informed, via email, that their lifetime hosting accounts would be deleted on October 31, 2012.[36] Depending on the nature of their initial investment, they were offered either one or three free years of hosting on a Joyent SmartMachine,[37] the company's cloud hosting solution, after which they would be moved to a regularly billed account. Customer backlash to the announcement turned out to be fierce.[28]

On August 30, 2012, Textdrive co-founder Dean Allen announced that he was relaunching TextDrive as a separate company which will carry on Joyent's shared hosting business and honor the "lifetime" agreements.[38][39] Allen plans to relaunch TextDrive on November 1, 2012, using Joyent infrastructure. He is confident he will succeed in building a viable business similar to DreamHost.[40]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Metz, Cade (September 15, 2011). "Joyent arms cloud for death match with Amazon: Son of Solaris hypervisor locked and loaded". The Register. Retrieved September 2, 2012. 
  2. ↑ Harris, Derrick (2010-12-07). "Joyent Targets Large-Scale Online Gaming". Gigaom.com. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  3. ↑ Chiang, Oliver (September 20, 2010). "THQ Partners with Cloud-Computing Provider Joyent, Upping Investment in Social Games". Forbes. Retrieved September 4, 2012. 
  4. ↑ Martin, Richard (August 1, 2007). "Joyent A-Twitter Preaching Its Shared Infrastructure". Information Week. Retrieved 5 July 2012. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Joyent Buys TextDrive". Alarmclock. November 28, 2005. 
  6. ↑ Thornsby, Jessica (November 10, 2010). "Node.js Moves to Joyent". Jaxenter. Retrieved August 31, 2012. 
  7. ↑ Klint Finley (2011-03-03). "Joyent Relaunches Node.js Service, Announces Cloud Analytics". Readwriteweb.com. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  8. ↑ Babcock, Charles (July 9, 2012). "Joyent's Cloud Competes With Google, Amazon". Information Week. Retrieved September 7, 2012. 
  9. ↑ "Joyent Announces SmartOS With KVM: an Open Source, Modern Operating System". Market Wire. 2011-08-15. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  10. ↑ Higginbotham, Stacey (August 15, 2011). "Joyent launches a new OS for the Cloud". GigaOm. Retrieved August 31, 2012. 
  11. ↑ "Dell to Provide Joyent Cloud Software Solution to Service Providers". Bizcloud Network. 2010-11-19. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  12. ↑ Malik, Om (2010-03-24). "For Dell, Joyent Weaves a Software Cloud". Gigaom.com. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  13. ↑ Smith, Nathan; Cody Lindley, Kevin Potts, Robert Sable, Mary Fredborg (2007-05-22). Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy. Berkeley, CA: Apress. p. 4. ISBN 9781590598320. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "History of TextDrive". The Unofficial TextDrive Wiki. November 12, 2006. Retrieved September 3, 2012. 
  15. ↑ "Welcome to TextDrive – Reliable, high performance web hosting you can trust". TextDrive.com. November 29, 2005. 
  16. ↑ Williams, Justin (2007-01-24). Rails Solutions: Ruby on Rails Made Easy. Berkeley, CA: Apress. p. 226. ISBN 9781590597521. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "Joyent acquires TextDrive: Combines recognized innovators in Web 2.0 team collaboration software and advanced hosting services to lead the industry shift to network-based applications.". PR Newswire. November 28, 2005. Retrieved September 4, 2012. 
  18. ↑ Smith, Nathan; Cody Lindley, Kevin Potts, Robert Sable, Mary Fredborg (2007-05-22). Textpattern Solutions: PHP-Based Content Management Made Easy. Berkeley, CA: Apress. p. 5. ISBN 9781590598320. 
  19. ↑ Hicks, Matthew (December 20, 2004). "Movable Type Fixing Bug as Spam Clogs Blogs". eWeek. 
  20. ↑ "Joyent Buys Web Host TextDrive". Webhost Industry Review. November 29, 2005. Retrieved September 1, 2012. 
  21. ↑ Arrington, Michael (October 5, 2005). "The Companies of Web 2.0, Part 1". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  22. ↑ "Workshops". Web 2.0 Conference. October 5, 2005. 
  23. ↑ "Joyent Launches Web Based Collaboration Platform: Enables Teams to Easily Communicate and Share Information Using the Joyent Platform's Web Mail, Calendars, Contacts, and Files". PR Newswire. March 1, 2006. Retrieved September 4, 2012. 
  24. ↑ Coleman, Alan (September 27, 2011). "The end of Joyent Connector, now what for my contacts?". Web Dev & Creative Blog. 
  25. ↑ Malik, Om (2009-01-13). "Joyent Buys Reasonably Smart to Create Open-source Cloud". Gigaom.com. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  26. ↑ Malik, Om (August 13, 2009). "Startup Joyent Sells BingoDisk and Strongspace". Gigaom.com. 
  27. ↑ Higginbotham, Stacey (2010-07-15). "Joyent Buys Layerboom to Offer Enterprises Easier Transition to the Cloud". Gigaom.com. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Sherman, Erik (August 29, 2012). "The Tricky Business of Lifetime Guarantees". Inc.com. Retrieved August 29, 2012. 
  29. ↑ Lindsay, Adam T. (March 4, 2007). "Lifetime plans". The Unofficial TextDrive Wiki. Retrieved August 29, 2012. 
  30. ↑ Young, David (November 17, 2009). "Joyent Raises Institutional Money: Why We Did It". Joyeur. 
  31. ↑ Malik, Om (November 17, 2009). "How Much Money Did Joyent Really Raise?". GigaOm. Retrieved 30 August 2012. 
  32. ↑ "Joyent | CrunchBase Profile". Crunchbase.com. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  33. ↑ Hardawar, Devindra (September 14, 2010). "Joyent lands another $15M for cloud computing services". Venture Beat. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  34. ↑ "Joyent Secures $15 Million in Series C Funding". PR Newswire. September 14. Retrieved 2012-07-05. 
  35. ↑ Darrow, Barb (January 23, 2012). "Cloud provider Joyent gets $85 million for global expansion". GigaOm. Retrieved August 31, 2012. 
  36. ↑ Finley, Klint (August 16, 2012). "Cloud Computing Company Joyent Leaves Early Supporters Out In The Cold". Techcrunch. Retrieved August 24, 2012. 
  37. ↑ Butler, Brandon (August 19, 2012). "Cloud Company Ending 'Lifetime' Hosting promise". PC World. Retrieved August 19, 2012. 
  38. ↑ Higginbotham, Stacey (August 30, 2012). "A user revolt and the second coming of TextDrive". GigaOm. Retrieved August 30, 2012. 
  39. ↑ Henderson, Nicole (August 30, 2012). "TextDrive Separates from Joyent to Continue Lifetime Web Hosting Deal". Webhost Industry Review. Retrieved August 30, 2012. 
  40. ↑ Henderson, Nicole (September 5, 2012). "Inside CEO Dean Allen's Plans for a Resurrected TextDrive Hosting Service". Webhost Industry Review. Retrieved September 6, 2012. 

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