Engine Yard buys OpDemand, the startup behind open-source cloud platform Deis

Engine Yard, a startup that offers a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud developers can use to build and run apps, has acquired OpDemand, a startup that created open-source PaaS tool Deis, the companies announced today.

“By joining forces with Engine Yard, Deis will continue to flourish as an open source project and community. As Engine Yard helps the project to evolve, Deis will remain the best way to deploy and manage distributed applications in production,” OpDemand chief technology officer and Deis creator Gabriel Monroy wrote in a blog post on the news.

Deis’ technology builds on the Linux container technologies that have become trendy among developers. If an application can be stuck inside a Docker container, it can run on Deis.

The PaaS area has undergone plenty of consolidation. CenturyLink bought AppFog, for instance. Docker, once known as dotCloud, ended up leaving the PaaS business and pivoting toward the container technology that it helped make into a hit.

For those developers who want to use the open-source Deis code for running their own PaaS in their data centers — rather than paying for premium service — Engine Yard will provide commercial support.

San Francisco-based Engine Yard started in 2006.

OpDemand started in 2011 and was based in Boulder, Colorado. Investors included Zor Gorelov.

See Monroy’s blog post for more details on the implications of the acquisition.