by Angela Guess
Trevor Gilbert of PandoDaily reports, “As big and important as the cloud hosting market is to the global startup ecosystem, a giant part of it is being underserved and ignored. At least, that’s the story coming from DigitalOcean, a recent TechStars grad. The current cloud hosting market is dominated by companies like Amazon and Rackspace, with a number of smaller providers dotting the fringes of the market. But the problem with these companies, which DigitalOcean is looking to address, is that Amazon and Rackspace are geared towards bigger, enterprise-level needs. This means smaller businesses are left in the dark.”
Gilbert goes on, “According to the company, the fact that this market is being ignored provides a big business opportunity. Some companies have tried to tackle the problem before, like SliceHost and Voxel. But once the companies reach a certain size and level of success, they are acquired by Amazon or Rackspace. This then leaves the mid-tier of the market underserved again. Initially, I was a bit skeptical about how big of a difference there is between a large institution and small business, in terms of product needs. But as the company explained, small businesses don’t want to have to worry about hiring system administrators to deal with Amazon’s complicated product and pricing structure.”
photo credit: DigitalOcean
