OPSCODE ANNOUNCES
$2.5 MILLION IN SERIES A ROUND
Draper Fisher Jurvetson Leads Round in Infrastructure Automation
Start-up Founded by Former Amazon.com Operations and Cloud Computing Experts
SEATTLE, Wash – April
24, 2009 – Opscode, Inc., a cloud infrastructure automation company, today
announced that it has closed its Series A round of $2.5 million led by Draper
Fisher Jurvetson. Opscode’s
technology enables companies of all sizes to build, scale, and manage
world-class, fully automated infrastructures based on community best practices
and expertise. The company plans
to use the funds to fill several key
positions as it prepares to launch its core service later this year.
Opscode has already released “Chef”, an open source systems
integration framework. Using Chef,
software developers and engineers are able to manage large-scale server and
application deployments by writing code, rather than running commands by
hand. Chef has a rapidly growing
community of contributors and early adopters, and is already in production use
at companies including Engine Yard, 37Signals, and Wikia.
“Opscode is defining essential automation solutions that
companies need to take full advantage of cloud computing and virtualization
technologies,” said Bill Bryant, Venture Partner with Draper Fisher Jurvetson
and Opscode board member. “The founding Opscode team is comprised of experts
who have built and operated some of the Web’s largest sites and supporting
infrastructure services, such as Amazon EC2. Companies that embrace infrastructure automation will gain a
significant advantage over those that manage these processes by hand.”
Founding CEO Jesse Robbins is a widely respected expert in
Web Infrastructure and Operations.
Robbins is co-chair of the Velocity Web Performance and
Operations conference and is a regular contributor to the O’Reilly Radar blog. He previously worked at Amazon.com
where his title was “Master of Disaster”, responsible for ensuring website
availability.
Other members of Opscode’s executive team include:
·
Adam Jacob, Chief Technology Officer, co-founded
Opscode and brings over a decade of experience building tools for systems
automation and integration. He has
held senior technical positions with HJK Solutions (a leading infrastructure
automation consultancy), Marchex, and InfoSpace;
·
Christopher Brown, Vice President of
Engineering, was most recently Director of Engineering for Global Foundation
Services at Microsoft. Prior to
Microsoft, Chris was the Founding Member, Architect, and Lead Developer for
Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud (“EC2”);
·
Barry Steinglass, Vice President of Product
Development, was the Program Manager for the digital entertainment features of
the Xbox 360 at Microsoft; and
·
Nathan Haneysmith, Director of Operations, was
the former Linux Platform Lead for the Americas at IBM Global Services.
“Opscode’s mission is to bring infrastructure automation to
the masses. Our team is uniquely
experienced, having built and operated some of the biggest websites and services
that people use and rely on every day,” said Jesse Robbins, co-founder and CEO
of Opscode. “With the financial and strategic support of our investors, we are
positioned to fulfill that mission.”
About Opscode
Opscode was co-founded in 2008 by Jesse Robbins and Adam
Jacob, along with other notable technologists who have helped to shape today’s
Cloud infrastructure. Opscode enables companies of all sizes to build and
maintain scalable, fully automated infrastructure based on community best
practices and expertise. The company is privately held and headquartered in
Seattle’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood. More information can be found at www.opscode.com
About Draper Fisher
Jurvetson
Draper Fisher Jurvetson ("DFJ") backs
extraordinary entrepreneurs anywhere who set out to change the world. DFJ achieves its mission through its
DFJ Global Network of Partner Funds managing over $6B on four continents. Over the past twenty years, DFJ and its
Network have been proud to back over 600 companies across many sectors
including such industry changing catalysts as Hotmail (acquired by MSFT), Baidu
(BIDU), Skype (acquired by EBAY), United Online (UNTD), Overture (acquired by
YHOO), Athenahealth (ATHN), EnerNOC (ENOC), TicketsNow (acquired by
TicketMaster), Feedburner (acquired by Google), Interwoven (IWOV), Four11
(acquired by YHOO), Parametric (PMTC), and Digidesign (acquired by AVID).
Press Contact:
Robert Nachbar, Kismet Communications, 206-427-0389,
rob@kismetcommunications.net