The Battle of the Clouds: Samsung Jumps In with Joyent Acquisition Following Microsoft’s LinkedIn Purchase

Today, tech giant Samsung creates a ripple in the cloud services sector with the announcement of its acquisition of American cloud services provider, Joyent Inc. This action neatly ups the ante in the intensifying competition among top tech companies vying for dominance in the cloud. According to The Wall Street Journal, Samsung has made this purchase for an undisclosed sum.

Backed by prominent Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, Joyent marks Samsung’s third major acquisition of a U.S. startup within the past two years. Following the $250 million purchase of SmartThings, a startup that facilitates home appliance integration, and the $160 million acquisition of LoopPay, a key developer of mobile payment technologies, Samsung has clearly underlined its commitment towards enhancing its capabilities in the tech realm. Notably, LoopPay’s technology provided the foundational drive for Samsung Pay, the leading mobile payment system of the South Korea-based company.

In the cloudburst of the technology market, Joyent stands in rivalry with Amazon.com Inc.’s Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure. All three companies offer services ranging from computer server rentals to providing data center facilities to third-party establishments.

The announcement from Samsung springs up hot on the heels of Microsoft’s recent declaration to purchase LinkedIn. The noteworthy $26.2 billion deal has been seen by tech enthusiasts and experts as a part of Microsoft’s determined pursuit of cloud technology, a strategy that began in earnest with the ascension of Satya Nadella as CEO in 2014. This direction has evidently paid off, with Microsoft stock witnessing a steady climb. In other related news, tech titan Dell also confirmed plans to foster its cloud data storage capabilities through a significant collaboration with EMC.

Big Data continues to represent a key engine driving the future of technology. Companies managing to harness and utilize this effectively are reaping rich dividends and appear set to do so in the foreseeable future. As per the statistics from IBM, an astonishing 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are birthed daily, simultaneously paving the way for job creation in the IT sector. Research and advisory firm Gartner estimates that as many as 4.4 million IT jobs were slated to be spawned globally by 2015 to support big data, nearly half of which were expected to originate in the US.

Looking into future prospects, an International Data Corporation (IDC) report reveals a promising forecast, “Worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics are projected to burgeon from nearly $122 billion in 2015 to north of $187 billion in 2019, marking an increase of more than 50% over the five-year forecast period. IT Services are set to generate over thrice the annual revenues of Business Services, with software standing as the second largest category, minting more than $55 billion in revenues in 2019.”

Delve deeper into the fascinating world of Big Data by reading our exclusive report here.

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