I was getting really close to switching to another cloud hosting provider due to the lack of private networks. Great to see that Digital Ocean is staying a step ahead.
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.
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.