Samsung announced plans to acquire cloud services provider Joyent in a move that sets the equipment maker up to be a player in the cloud space
Samsung will become the largest user of Joyent’s cloud services. Soon, Samsung will be able to provide similar services as Apple’s iCloud. The key is what Samsung and Joyent can do to provide unique cloud services that will leverage Samsung’s device and “internet of things” offerings.
Samsung was facing a huge problem, particularly in mobile. While it has produced great smartphones and tablets – as well as laptops and hundreds of other high-tech products – the company did not have any cloud offering it could provide to its clients much like what Apple has in their iCloud offering. And, it’s not that Samsung needed just a cloud offering as in the concept of a place to store things, it also needed a cloud infrastructure framework in which to build a set of services that would help consumers as well as enterprises.
Samsung recently announced plans to acquire Joyent, a company that meets all of Samsung’s needs for a cloud resource. This is one of those cases in which an acquisition announcement is really the start of something rather than the end of something.
Joyent has not only a public and private traditional cloud offering, but it also has a cloud infrastructure in which Samsung will be able to build a family of cloud services that include mobile, IoT, and cloud-based software and services.
Joyent has three main products:
1. Triton, which provides a “container-as-a-service” platform for enabling secure areas for enterprises to keep confidential information.
2. Manta, which provides “object storage technologies” from which users can create a number of different secure storage solutions.
3. Node.js provides assistance in compiling and running Java Script programs.
Thus, Joyent provides both standard cloud as well as programmatic cloud solutions that give customers the ability to construct cloud services based on their own requirements. Clearly, Samsung will quickly become Joyent’s largest customer as it moves its current cloud requirements from Amazon Web Services.
One thing that will be of interest is how other cloud storage and services will be affected by this move by Samsung. I don’t expect this transaction will affect AWS or cloud storage services such as Dropbox. However, we do now have a major cloud storage and services entity owned and operated by the two largest mobile device vendors – Apple and Samsung. This enables Apple with iCloud and Samsung with Joyent to begin to offer services that work only with their devices or at least provide enhanced services that leverage their device businesses.
For example, iCloud now offers sync with the users Contacts (can be in Outlook), Calendar, iCloud Drive, Photos, Mail (can be Outlook) as well as Apple’s own versions of word processing (Pages), spreadsheets (Numbers) and presentations (Keynote). Apple could also offer other services to enhance its brand.
The real key to Samsung’s acquiring Joyent is what it does to help Samsung Galaxy, Gear and IoT devices users do with something unique via the Joyent service, for example making it insanely easy to store all your important data and to provide unique services just available from their cloud service, such as a good streaming-music service.
So, congrats to Samsung. Smart move. The key is what the company can do with the asset, and not just making it another cloud storage service.
J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., is the principal analyst with Mobilocity LLC and a research affiliate with Frost & Sullivan. He is a nationally recognized industry authority who focuses on monitoring and analyzing emerging trends, technologies and market behavior in mobile computing and wireless data communications devices, software and services. Purdy is an “edge of network” analyst looking at devices, applications and services as well as wireless connectivity to those devices. He provides critical insights regarding mobile and wireless devices, wireless data communications and connection to the infrastructure that powers the data in wireless handheld devices. Purdy continues to be affiliated with the venture capital industry as well. He spent five years as a venture adviser for Diamondhead Ventures in Menlo Park, California, where he identified, attracted and recommended investments in emerging companies in the mobile and wireless industry. Purdy had a prior affiliation with East Peak Advisors and, subsequently, following its acquisition, with FBR Capital Markets. Purdy advises young companies that are preparing to raise venture capital, and has been a member of the program advisory board of the Consumer Electronics Association that produces CES, one of the largest trade shows in the world. He is a frequent moderator at CTIA conferences and GSM Mobile World Congress. Prior to funding Mobilocity, Purdy was chief mobility analyst with Compass Intelligence. Prior to that, he owned MobileTrax LLC and enjoyed successful stints at Frost & Sullivan and Dataquest (a division of Gartner) among other companies.
Editor’s Note: Welcome to Analyst Angle. We’ve collected a group of the industry’s leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry.
