Samsung buys cloud company Joyent
In a continued effort to strengthen the software and services behind its mobile division, Samsung Electronics has decided to purchase US cloud services company Joyent for an undisclosed sum.
The company plans on integrating Joyent into its own mobile business, but it will continue to operate independently with its top management remaining in charge of its day to day business. This is Samsung’s third major acquisition of a US-based startup over the last two years after acquiring SmartThings for its connected home technology and LoopPay for its contactless payment service.
Samsung and other large companies are becoming increasingly interested in the idea of using big data and cloud computing to improve the way in which their businesses operate. Currently Joyent competes against both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure by charging third-party companies to use its servers and data centers. Samsung already uses both AWS and Azure for their cloud services and now it will be able to use Joyent as an additional source of processing power while at the same time gaining a piece of this growing market for itself.
The deal was overseen by the company’s chief technology officer of its mobile division, Injong Rhee who says: "We’ve traditionally been more focused on hardware, but you’re going to see more focus on software and services. Big data is going to be a huge initiative for Samsung. Samsung devices will be increasingly intelligent, and big data is really a key component of intelligence and personalization.”
Joyent’s CEO, Scott Hammond is excited about what the company can accomplish by working alongside Samsung: "Samsung brings us the scale we need to grow our cloud and software business".
As the race to utilize big data and cloud computing more effectively takes off, there will likely be more acquisitions of start ups that give larger companies a competing edge.
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