dotCloud

dotCloud was a cloud computing company that provided a platform as a service (PaaS) for deploying, scaling, and managing web applications. Founded in 2010 in Paris by Solomon Hykes and colleagues, the service offered developers a streamlined way to deploy apps with configuration, runtimes, databases, and add-ons, across multiple cloud providers.

In 2013, dotCloud released Docker as an open‑source container technology designed to package and run applications in lightweight, isolated environments. Docker emphasized portability, reproducibility, and efficient use of system resources, and it quickly gained widespread adoption within the developer and operations communities.

Following the rise of Docker, the company rebranded as Docker, Inc. in 2013 and shifted its focus toward supporting and developing the Docker ecosystem and related tooling. As Docker gained prominence, the dotCloud PaaS offering was gradually phased out in favor of the container platform and its expanding ecosystem.

Legacy and impact: dotCloud is remembered as the origin of Docker, with its initial PaaS work contributing to early ideas about deploying applications using containers. The Docker project evolved into a major open-source platform and commercial products that underpin modern containerization, orchestration, and cloud deployment across numerous providers.

See also: Docker, Docker Engine, containerization, platform as a service.