Fast-growing cloud provider DigitalOcean lights up London data center

Public-cloud provider DigitalOcean is growing its global reach with a new data center in London, England.

The New York-based cloud hosting provider announced the new facility today, its third in Europe, which will offer faster service to U.K. developers than its two Amsterdam data centers. DigitalOcean also opened up a data center in Singapore this February, right before announcing the $37.2 million funding round that’s helping the company finance its rapid geographic expansion.

Cloud titan Amazon Web Services still towers over DigitalOcean in terms of feature set and customer base, but developers are rapidly latching onto DigitalOcean’s cloud-based infrastructure service for its low prices and ease of use. It’s become a favorite in some developer circles, like the Ruby on Rails community.

As DigitalOcean continues to improve its service with features like IPv6 support, the company hopes to attract a broader swath of developers, including those at larger businesses.

“Our mission is to service the 20+ million developers around the world,” DigitalOcean cofounder Mitch Wainer told VentureBeat. “Currently, only 150,000 developers are using DigitalOcean,” compared to 100,000 at the end of last year.

“We have a long way to go to narrow that gap, and by expanding globally, we’re able to service developers who are restricted due to government data privacy laws, such as the U.K., Canada, and Australia,” he said. “We’re looking to service all of these countries in the near future.”