Comment by linsomniac

Aside: we were also one of the first VM providers, I see on the Wayback Machine we were offering it in Feb 2005, predating Digital Ocean by at least 6 years. I've regretted not marketing and selling that service much more widely. It was a side project and we had a lot of irons in the fire at the time, so we didn't focus on it very much.

It was implemented with User Mode Linux, a Linux kernel ported to run under Linux instead of ported to a bare machine. A crazy idea, but it worked REALLY well. I remember finishing up the sign-up and billing software on the plane on the way to US PyCon where we announced the service, though I don't remember the year.