WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.
Telefonica Digital has become a major backer of (and strategic investor in) Joyent, the company behind Node.js, thought by many observers to be the key to driving development in the cloud 'back end'. By Ian Scales.
Joyent has just completed an $85 million investor round and will see Telefonica Digital (the new Telefonica next gen services arm) put skin in the Joyent game and get access to Joyent's 'technology expertise' as well as its technology.
Joyent has a range of cloud products and development avenues and is in the process of building a web-scale competitor to Amazon's cloud services.
It has facilities in five data centers in the US, divided into pods to isolate possible failures.
But the Joyent development that is capturing the tech world's attention now is Node.js - the js stands for Javascript which is the technology buried in most browsers to do the complicated local processing activities that browsers are increasingly called on to do within the Web 2.0 environment.
Node.js is about setting Javascript to work on the server-side - in the cloud. So real cloud applications where processes are handed off from the client to the cloud (and back again) can be done by one developer with one family of tools.
Node.js is an open source project 'stewarded' by Joyent and already has backing from the likes of Microsoft
Joyent has built up its knowledge launching and operating cloud services for 12,000 US businesses.
The Spanish incumbent’s venture capital arm handled the investment, which the operator claims will boost its new Digital division’s cloud ambitions by allowing it to leverage Joyent’s expertise to enhance cloud services for small and medium enterprises, and small and home office customers.
“Joyent’s technology fits perfectly with our in-house developed technologies and our cloud services model and enables us to provide more competitive offerings to a broader range of customer segments,” explains Matthew Key, chairman and chief of Telefonica Digital.
Telefonica’s investment forms part of an $85 million (€65.2 million) funding round conducted for Joyent by Weather Investments II. The cloud firm plans to use the monies to roll out new high-performance public clouds for global corporations throughout 2012.
The buy-in is Telefonica’s second in recent months, following its acquisition of Wi-Fi specialist Quantenna in November.
Press Release:
Telefónica boosts cloud capabilities with strategic investment in Joyent, Inc.
- Telefónica Digital through its venture capital arm joins other leading companies and VCs including Greycroft Partners and Intel Capital.
- This investment round was led by major European fund Weather Investment II Group, who gathered other strategic and financial investors to expand Joyent’s global scale.
LONDON and SAN FRANCISCO, January 23, 2012– Telefónica today announced that it has signed a strategic partnership with Joyent, a leader in cloud services and technologies. The partnership sees Telefónica making a strategic equity investment in Joyent that, in turn, gives it access to the latest Joyent technologies and software for the deployment of high performance and cost efficient cloud services.
Cloud-based services are a key focus area for Telefónica’s new Digital unit, and Joyent’s technology expertise will help Telefónica enhance its product offering, particularly for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Small Office Home Office (SoHo ) customers. The partnership combines Telefónica’s global scale and infrastructure with the cloud architecture developed by Joyent.
Unlike other cloud technology providers, Joyent has developed its entire cloud software stack from scratch, resulting in significant cost reduction and efficiency, an easy to operate architecture and exceptional operational performance. The company has proven experience in defining, exploiting, commercialising and operating a cloud business with over 12,000 public cloud customers in the US
“This investment is further proof of our ambition in the area of cloud services and our strategy of working with the most innovative start-ups,” said Matthew Key, Chairman & CEO, Telefónica Digital. “Joyent’s technology fits perfectly with our in-house developed technologies and our cloud services model and enables us to provide more competitive offerings to a broader range of customer segments.”
“This strategic partnership and funding will enable us to expand our product offering to more regions and to evolve our products, taking advantage of the service provider vision brought by Telefonica” said David Young, founder and CEO of Joyent.
Tracy Isacke led the investment in Joyent for Telefónica Ventures, a division of Telefónica Digital, with offices in Silicon Valley, London , Madrid and Israel
Telefónica Digital has been formed to lead Telefónica’s growth strategy in the new digital world. Through a combination of research and development, partnership, investment and acquisition it will bring innovative products and services to market that allow it to drive continued growth in the core telecommunications market, as well as taking a leading role in new digital services such as entertainment, financial services, M2M, cloud computing and eHealth.
About Telefónica Digital
Telefónica Digital is a global business division of Telefónica. Its mission is to seize the opportunities within the digital world and deliver new growth for Telefónica through research & development, venture capital, global partnerships and digital services such as cloud computing, mobile advertising, M2M and eHealth. Telefónica Digital will deliver these innovative products and services to Telefónica’s 300 million customers as well as leveraging the power of the internet to enter new markets. It is headquartered in London Sao Paolo Spain
For further information, please contact:
Nick Wilkins Telefónica Press Office
Telefónica Digital Tel: +34 91 482 38 00
Tel: +44 7712 020937 Email: prensa@telefonica.es
Email: nick.wilkins@o2.com
About Joyent, Inc.
Joyent is a global cloud computing and systems software provider that offers an integrated technology suite designed for enterprises and developers. JoyentCloud.com delivers public cloud services to some of the most innovative companies in the world, including LinkedIn, Gilt Groupe and Kabam. Node.js, the open source server-side JavaScript project owned and stewarded by Joyent, provides developers and enterprises such as Microsoft with the most powerful runtime for developing data-intensive, real-time apps. Joyent is also the key contributor to and sponsor of Joyent SmartOS, an open source project dedicated to the complete, modern operating system. SmartDataCenter orchestrates Joyent’s technologies into a cohesive, reliable and distributed system that can stand up to the compute demands of the modern world. A global ecosystem of leading technology partners assists Joyent in enabling customers to leverage the performance, scalability, reliability and security inherent in the company’s cloud solutions. For more information, visit http://www.joyent.com
Joyent Media Contact:
Scott VanSickle
Hoffman PR
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