Why GoDaddy’s Nodejitsu deal is great for Node.js

Don’t worry about how much GoDaddy shelled out to buy Node.js startup Nodejitsu. (GoDaddy isn’t saying.) The fact is, the acquisition is terrific news for the open-source project Node.js.

See, GoDaddy loves Node, which is a server-side JavaScript framework. It’s been gradually transitioning to Node (from Microsoft’s .Net stack), and things have been going great, GoDaddy says.

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“We need 10X less servers in our infrastructure than with our traditional hosting infrastructure,” GoDaddy vice president of engineering Antonio Silveira told VentureBeat today, after GoDaddy officially confirmed the deal.

Now GoDaddy, which sells domains and hosts websites, wants Nodejitsu’s four employees to work hard to accelerate the migration — once they join GoDaddy’s presence and commerce team.

If nothing else, the acquisition proves that a company operating lots of data center infrastructure finds value in Node. Sure, other companies, including Groupon, LinkedIn, and Walmart, have shown their love for it in the past, but they haven’t always made Node-related acquisitions to make their point.

PayPal, for example, said publicly that it “built almost twice as fast with fewer people” after switching to Node, to use the words of Jeff Harrell, director of engineering for business and payments at the company. But PayPal didn’t acquire any of the Node startups out there. So today is another big day when it comes to Node’s validation — especially following the news about the formation of the Node.js Foundation, which is meant to introduce more open governance of the project.

But it’s not the first acquisition of a Node startup by a software company. Last year Progress Software bought Modulus. In 2012, AppFog bought Nodester. In 2013, Nodejitsu itself bought Iris Couch.

Nodejitsu founder and chief executive Charlie Robbins certainly thinks highly of Node.

“Clearly there is value in it, and that value is in the commitment and dedication of contributors of which Node has more full-time paid core contributors than any other platform out there,” Robbins told VentureBeat.

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Altogether, Robbins sounded pleased, not only for Node but also for his company.

“This is a good deal,” he said. I’m extremely happy about it.”