dotCloud

dotCloud was a polyglot platform-as-a-service, launched in 2010 and best remembered for what it produced rather than what it sold: the container tooling built to run customer applications was released as Docker in 2013, and within a year the company had renamed itself after the tool and left the hosting business.

Docker sold dotCloud to Berlin’s cloudControl in August 2014. When cloudControl went insolvent eighteen months later, dotCloud went with it — the shutdown notice named the parent’s insolvency as the reason and gave customers until 29 February 2016.

The sequence had a precedent, and it is in this register: Loudcloud built Opsware to operate its customers’ servers, sold the hosting to EDS in 2002, renamed itself after the tool and went to HP for $1.6 billion. dotCloud built Docker to run its customers’ applications, sold the hosting to cloudControl in 2014 and renamed itself after the tool. Both times the software a hosting company wrote to do its own job turned out to be the valuable part, and both times the hosting is what ended.