Cloud hosting platform DigitalOcean is going beyond cloud hosting and Kubernetes. With Marketplace, the company is launching its first service that allows outside vendors to participate in its software ecosystem. “Marketplace features a focused ecosystem of partner-built 1-Click Apps — pre-configured software and infrastructure stacks running on DigitalOcean — that provide the services, components and tools necessary for modern app development,” the company stated in a blog post announcing the launch. "Our goal is to help next generation developers and small- and mid-sized businesses spend less time thinking about infrastructure, and more time creating modern apps — partners are critical to realizing this vision," said Mark Templeton, CEO of DigitalOcean. "Marketplace will serve as a hub to connect them with partners that deliver fully-integrated, ready-made apps and tools that can be launched in less than 60 seconds. Our initial offerings focus on the types of apps most used by our community of developers, businesses and teams." It’s unclear what types of apps or services DigitalOcean Marketplace will allow. At launch, products from Cloudbees, GitLab, InfluxData, Grafana, Plesk, cPanel, OpenFaaS, Hasura GraphQL, and Fathom Analytics are available for use by developers and engineers anywhere. DigitalOcean focuses its platform on three key areas: continuous integration/continuous development (CI/CD), web apps, and managing APIs or backend services. As cloud-based offerings go, it’s about as thorough as you can get. Click through this mini-gallery below: [gallery ids="eyJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaW5zaWdodHMuZGljZS5jb21cL3dwLWNvbnRlbnRcL3VwbG9hZHNcLzIwMTlcLzAyXC9tYXJrZXRwbGFjZS0xLnBuZyIsInRpdGxlIjoiRGlnaXRhbCBPY2VhbiBNYXJrZXRwbGFjZSAxIiwiY2FwdGlvbiI6IiIsImFsdCI6IkRpZ2l0YWwgT2NlYW4gTWFya2V0cGxhY2UgMSIsImRlc2NyaXB0aW9uIjoiRGlnaXRhbCBPY2VhbiBNYXJrZXRwbGFjZSAxIn0=,eyJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaW5zaWdodHMuZGljZS5jb21cL3dwLWNvbnRlbnRcL3VwbG9hZHNcLzIwMTlcLzAyXC9tYXJrZXRwbGFjZS0yLmpwZyIsInRpdGxlIjoiRGlnaXRhbCBPY2VhbiBNYXJrZXRwbGFjZSAyIiwiY2FwdGlvbiI6IiIsImFsdCI6IkRpZ2l0YWwgT2NlYW4gTWFya2V0cGxhY2UgMiIsImRlc2NyaXB0aW9uIjoiRGlnaXRhbCBPY2VhbiBNYXJrZXRwbGFjZSAyIn0=,eyJ1cmwiOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaW5zaWdodHMuZGljZS5jb21cL3dwLWNvbnRlbnRcL3VwbG9hZHNcLzIwMTlcLzAyXC9tYXJrZXRwbGFjZS0zLmpwZyIsInRpdGxlIjoibWFya2V0cGxhY2UtMyIsImNhcHRpb24iOiIiLCJhbHQiOiIiLCJkZXNjcmlwdGlvbiI6IiJ9"] The offering is eerily similar to GitHub Actions, which allows developers to string together pre-made services made available by just about anyone. With Actions, you can create and manage your own workflow for things such as testing; at launch, we likened GitHub Actions to CocoaPods for code. The main difference is GitHub Actions allows developers to manipulate their own stacks, while DigitalOcean Marketplace seems focused on providing pre-fabricated solutions rather than snippets you can string together. In light of that, Marketplace is well-positioned as a DigitalOcean service. While each instance is unique, the overall scope of what you can do on DigitalOcean is limited to whatever's been preconfigured. If your company is managing a cloud-based CRM ‘droplet’ on DigitalOcean, Marketplace may one day have a tool that scans for and merges duplicate entries rather than asking you to find unique tools that reside within that tool (one for scanning, one for identifying duplicates, etc.) to cobble your own solution together. DigitalOcean is holding true to its mission of one-click services with Marketplace. Speed matters, and Marketplace could help developers spin up services for their droplets without spending a lot of time spelunking through an online shop to find what they need.