DigitalOcean, Infrastructure as a Service, News & Analysis

DigitalOcean simplifies IP addressing of services with new cloud building invention

CloudCloud infrastructure platform maker DigitalOcean has launched new tools for developing building large-scale applications. The tools, Floating IPs and Team Account Management, aim to speed up the process by removing common blockages reported by cloud application writers.

The Floating IPs platform aims to make it easier for developers to quickly associate an IP address with a different cloud server (AKA Droplet). The system caters for quick allocation through one of two routes, using either the system control panel or application programming interface (API). “This eliminates single points of failure and empowers developers to build production applications at any scale,” said Brooke McKim, director of product at DigitalOcean.

The company has also released Team Accounts, a system to improve support for teams of developers working together to power established applications. The system allows developers to invite multiple users to access and manage the account’s resources, such as Droplets, without having to share their own login credentials or billing information.

DigitalOcean says that since its formation, in 2012, 700,000 developers have used its cloud building system to create eight million cloud servers. The release of Floating IPs will make it a lot easier to tag servers to apps and create highly available applications, according to Moisey Uretsky, co-founder and chief product officer at DigitalOcean.

“Simplicity is difficult to achieve,” said Uretsky, “There’s a lot of benefit in taking the time to get it right and making complex technology easy to use. We wanted this networking solution to have the same qualities developers love about The Droplet: simplicity, elegance and incredible user experience.”

Development of the new products was financed by an $83 million funding round in July 2015, with funds from Series B round of financing led by Access Industries. Other investors include Andreessen Horowitz, which led the company’s $37 million Series A round last year. Container pioneer Docker hosts its applications on DigitalOcean.