Joyent takes on Google

In what many will see as a bold move, cloud computing infrastructure provider Joyent is taking on Google. Today it announced the acquisition of Reasonably Smart, a Canadian open source infrastructure provider based on JavaScript and Git. Rod Boothby, Joyent's VP of platform evangelism said this is the first step in a road that will see Joyent doing what neither Amazon nor Google are prepared to do which is provide a truly portable platform: "We know that enterprises are not going to adopt proprietary cloud platforms yet that's exactly what Amazon with EC2 and Google App Engine are offering."

Joyent expects to achieve this by offering Reasonably Smart as an open source massively scalable architecture. This means for example that customers will be able to download open source virtualized server environments or 'write code once and scale forever' on Joyent's hosted Accelerator platform.  "One of the key selling points for us is that you can leave if you want. There is no lock-in. Customers like that because it gives them the control they need beyond simply dialling consumption up or down as demand dictates," said Boothby.

Taking on Google is non-trivial and the company readily admits that there is a long way to go. However, Joyent points to the fact it is serving over a billion Facebook pages per month as evidence of its ability to scale up and the fact it has attracted marquee customers like ABC.

Right now, Reasonably Smart is what Joyent considers alpha quality. While the company hopes to get to a beta in early course, it will take some years for the company to realize its vision."We're starting to fully understand issues like security in massively scalable enterprise environments. We're not there yet but we've got the basics done," said Boothby.

One reason that Joyent can afford to be bullish is that it is cash generative. Apart fomr a seed round provided by the founders, Joyent has been wholly funded out of operations.

While Boothby wouldn't be specific, it is understood the company will hit $10 million annual run rate on the next quarter. In addition, Joyent believes that its rental model fits well for recession conditions as it helps companies avoid the complexity of leasing arrangements.