Incremental Recurring Revenue Grows 192 Percent and Average Revenue Per New Customer Increases More Than 200 Percent Year-Over-Year in Q4 2014; ChefConf 2015 Convenes Thousands of Developers and IT Leaders;
Company Introduces New Flagship Product; Announces DevOps Practice; Launches New Partner Certification Program for Growing Ecosystem
SEATTLE and SANTA CLARA, Calif. – April 1, 2015 – Today at ChefConf 2015, Chef, the leader in automation for DevOps, unveiled corporate, product and partner news, underscoring enterprises’ increasing need for DevOps practices. Chef today announced the strongest quarter of growth in the company’s history. This week, thousands of developers and IT leaders convene at ChefConf 2015, both on-site and via livestream, where Chef is announcing that it is extending its leading automation platform with Chef Delivery (see separate release), a new DevOps workflow offering. Chef Delivery will empower enterprises to implement DevOps patterns for high-velocity software delivery. Chef is also announcing its DevOps Professional Services Practice, which is based upon years of experience in guiding Global 2000 businesses to embrace the movement’s culture, processes and tools.
Chef’s business is growing alongside the rapidly emerging market of DevOps. Following the recent news of a partnership between Chef and Microsoft, Chef plans to embark on collaborative integration efforts at the networking layer with Cisco and F5 Networks, as well as integration between the Chef analytics platform and Splunk’s leading operational intelligence and machine data platform to help provide a comprehensive view of users’ on-premises, cloud or hybrid infrastructure. Chef analytics also now integrates with cloud native log analytics leader Sumo Logic. Chef is also launching a new partner certification program ( see separate release). These partnerships strengthen Chef’s ability to help its customers operate at high velocity by adopting continuous delivery practices across applications and infrastructure.
DevOps is making quantifiable business impacts in the enterprise. As a professor at Utah State University, Nicole Forsgren was the nation’s premier investigator in the field of DevOps and the results it drives for businesses. Her research found high-performing DevOps organizations are twice as likely to exceed profitability, market share and productivity goals, and on average achieve 50 percent market cap growth over a three-year period. Forsgren is now a director with Chef and will be continuing and expanding her DevOps research as part of her new role.
News Highlights:
Business Momentum:
- Q4 2014 was Chef’s strongest revenue quarter to date, with incremental recurring revenue growing 192 percent year-over-year. More than 70 percent of Chef’s revenue comes from large enterprises, including Global 2000 organizations.
- Average revenue per new customer increased over 200 percent year-over-year in Q4 2014.
- Chef’s commercial software customer base has surged to more than 700, while Chef’s IT automation platform has been downloaded more than 16 million times, more than doubling year-over-year.
Product and Services News:
- In a separate announcement, Chef today announced Chef Delivery, a new DevOps workflow offering that automates changes throughout infrastructure and applications in enterprises. Chef Delivery packages together a standard software platform and DevOps-driven workflow for the continuous delivery of infrastructure, runtime environments and applications. Chef Delivery is available today through an invitation program, and general availability is planned in early 2016.
- Chef is providing new analytics integrations that expand Chef’s ability to deliver real-time visibility into infrastructure activity. Chef analytics integrates with Splunk’s leading operational intelligence and machine data platform to help provide a comprehensive view of users’ on-premises, cloud or hybrid infrastructure. Chef also integrates with Sumo Logic to enable greater visibility into cloud infrastructure. Chef analytics provides complete activity logs and user data in an easy-to-use dashboard, integrating security and compliance officers into DevOps workflows to enable compliant and high-velocity software delivery.
- Chef’s DevOps Practice, a dedicated professional services offering, helps enterprises embrace the culture, processes and tools of the DevOps movement. Chef’s professional services empower customers to successfully adopt DevOps patterns through a multi-phase process including training, need assessment, pilot projects and ongoing support.
Ecosystem Momentum:
- Chef and Canonical have partnered to integrate and distribute Chef with Ubuntu (see separate release). Chef will support Canonical’s Machine-As-A-Service (MAAS), enabling easy, automated deployment of bare metal resources in the data Center and the cloud. In addition, Canonical is going to package Chef into the Ubuntu distribution with commercial support for all users.
- Chef is further expanding its networking automation capabilities with companies including Cisco, F5 and others. Chef and Cisco are working to deliver native support for the Cisco NX-OS and IOS-XR platforms, which will provide seamless automation capabilities for a wide range of Cisco switches. Chef also announced a new Cookbook – authored by Target Corporation and open-sourced to the Chef community – for automating F5 BIG-IP® Local Traffic Manager™.
- Today Chef launched the Chef Certified Partner program (see separate release), which provides a technical certification program for services partners, empowering these companies to best support their customers’ Chef deployments.
ChefConf Convenes DevOps Enthusiasts:
- ChefConf 2015 kicks off today in Santa Clara, CA, with more than 1,500 of the most forward-thinking developers and IT leaders from around the world convening to share best practices for successful DevOps transformations in the enterprises.
- Enterprise customers and partners speaking at ChefConf this week include leaders from Amazon, Bloomberg, CenturyLink, The Walt Disney Company, Etsy, Facebook, GE Capital, Intuit, Microsoft, Nordstrom, Standard Bank, Target, Yahoo and many more.
Supporting Quotes:
“DevOps is gaining serious traction inside enterprises and Chef is at the epicenter of this disruptive and very productive period for companies around the world. Our business is growing exponentially, and we’re excited to introduce a wealth of new products, services and partnerships to continue helping our customers move faster, operate more securely and achieve critical business objectives.”
– Barry Crist, CEO, Chef
Additional Resources
- Learn more about Chef
- Follow Chef on Twitter @chef
- Watch ChefConf 2015 via livestream
About Chef
We are Chef – the leader in automation for DevOps. We give you a model for automating IT infrastructure and applications that drive self-reliance across your development and operations teams. We are the Chef community. We are tens of thousands strong. We are helping your businesses become faster, safer and more flexible, so you win in today’s 24×7 digital economy. Join our movement today. https://www.chef.io/