isn't DO technically a VPS and not cloud provider?

A cloud is not defined by high availability. Just look at Amazon's cloud - so many single points of failure. Amazon says to distribute your application and redundancy across multiple redundancy zones.

Cloud is defined as:

1. On demand automated provisioning 2. API interface for programatic control 3. Infinite resources from the customer's perspective 4. Virtual addresses for physical location 5. Utility measured service

This is the definition from NIST : http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800-145...

So in that context DigitalOcean and Amazon are both Cloud providers.

Isn't it all the cloud?

A dedicated host could be called a dedicated cloud provider. They give every customer their own cloud.

Mostly it's a marketing gimmick. What DO is, is a variation of dividing server resources, whether we use the term cloud or VPS or other.

I dont normally count Host with Per Minute billing and Storage in SAN a VPS.

I think disks are local

Can you please provide a reference? Thanks

Local RAID of SSD.

I am pretty sure they are not.

Glad we got you to stick around! =]