As a fast-growing company with global operations, DigitalOcean is focusing on building cloud computing products for developers. At Web Summit 2017, DigitalOcean had their booth located at prime location in Pavilion 1. There, we had an executive interview with Shiven Ramji, the Vice President of Product Management at DigitalOcean, about their growth-rate and their go-to-market strategy.
“We really try to make it easy for developers of any size and located in any region worldwide to get started with cloud computing,” said Shiven Ramji. “DigitalOcean has its headquarters in the U.S., but our developer community in Europe is also growing and maturing. We have a lot of customers on this continent and we’re trying to add a lot of features in our data centers in Europe to support them.”
SMB or Enterprise, which is the better go to market for DigitalOcean when it comes to your target audience?
“A specific segment that loves working with us include a lot of start-ups, which is very relevant for us being here at Web Summit 2017. Essentially we make it very, very easy to get them going using cloud computing products. We help them with lots of easy to use and easy to consume valuable content. Also when you’re a beginner or just learning the ins and outs of new technologies, we get you going. On top of that, we really give them the best pricing possible.”
You’re mentioning ‘best pricing,’ but cloud computing is now and then associated with hidden costs and relatively high invoices.
“We have removed the hassle of figuring out what it’s going to cost you when running an application in the cloud. DigitalOcean really has a very simple, no-nonsense pricing model which makes it very easy for companies, especially the ones who are just getting started to work with us.”
Can you tell HostingJournalist.com visitors what issues developers worldwide are facing right now?
“There are actually two main issues. One of those issues is managing costs. If you’re a smaller company, you probably don’t know if and how your company is going to grow, so cost management with regards to a developer cloud environment becomes an important part then. The second thing developers tend to struggle with in different types of companies regardless their size is how to scale. That’s why we really focus on removing the complexity of the developer process. The DigitalOcean cloud platform is a place where developers can easily start scaling their applications.”
What does it take for a cloud computing provider like DigitalOcean to develop and offer ‘highly scalable’ cloud solutions?
“We just try to make it very easy for customers to launch new cloud developer tools and cloud platforms. When setting up a user or testing environment, it usually only takes one-click and you can get it set-up on our cloud platform.”
HostingJournalist.com has noticed that DigitalOcean has been growing quite fast the last couple of years. Can you share with us the company growth secrets?
“Indeed, we’ve seen tremendous growth. We’ve been growing over multiple digits for a couple of years now and recently hit a million accounts on our cloud platform. So a million developers in total have engaged with us now and are actively using our cloud platform. Providing accessibility to an increasing amount of developers worldwide is a prerequisite for further growth, so focusing on the launch of new regions and new capabilities within those regions is very important for us.”
Regarding DigitalOcean’s fast growth, is it only about bringing the right developer cloud product to the market or is it also the result of a great marketing strategy?
[Mr. Ramji starts laughing, ed.] “Well, developers love our brand, which is great. The reason why they love us is because we put a lot of love and effort in de cloud products and tools we build and deliver. It is also about how we simplify the product and more importantly how we teach and up-level developers. As you know, developers really like growing and learning new things. That’s why we also invest a lot in producing the best content possible. If a developer wants to start playing with a new technology or try a new capability or a new language or framework, they are able to get started very, very easily. So, yes, marketing is a big part of what we offer but we really care about providing a reliable and scalable cloud platform. If we wouldn’t do that, DigitalOcean wouldn’t have this fast-growing amount of customers.”
