DivvyCloud spreads its bets from cloud management platform to DevOps Analyst: Jay Lyman 2 Apr, 2015 DivvyCloud, a cloud management and DevOps startup based in McLean, Virginia, supports on-premises multi- and hybrid-cloud management of public and private clouds with its DivvyCloud Management Platform (DCMP). The company's software also serves as a key piece of enterprise DevOps implementations that blend software developers and lines of business with IT operations and leadership to drive faster, more efficient releases. DivvyCloud says it is basically responding to consumer expectations and sensibilities that have made their way to enterprise development, productivity and line-of-business teams. This puts pressure on central IT teams to respond and compete with cloud computing, SaaS, open source and other resources that are readily available to their developers and teams, even though they are not sanctioned. DivvyCloud is also among the vendors we see focused primarily on infrastructure, which we think is wise since DevOps, self-service, PaaS and automation typically start with more effective, efficient management of cloud infrastructure. This contrasts to the common mantra of application-centricity we've heard for several years, and highlights some differentiation for companies such as DivvyCloud that focus primarily on managing and automating infrastructure. The 451 Take DivvyCloud's focus on infrastructure matches the needs of enterprise customers that are taking their first steps into DevOps by effectively managing and automating infrastructure and IT operations. We also like the positioning of the cloud as the answer to the same issues raised by the cloud: shadow IT, standardization, security and the need for self-service. DivvyCloud's offer as on-premises and agentless illustrates some lessons from predecessors, many of which had to choose whether to be on-premises or hosted, and many of which have agent-based monitoring and management. DivvyCloud's challenges center on its small size in a market exploding with everything from startup competitors to midsized rivals to Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 1
increasingly engaged giants. Context DivvyCloud, founded in 2012, is a startup focused on multi- and hybrid-cloud management and faster, more agile DevOps practices, to drive efficiency and reduce risk from one-off and shadow IT deployments that are not necessarily sanctioned or secured. The company's leadership is made up of technologists that were formerly with gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA) in development and systems administration, including CEO Brian Johnson, COO Chris DeRamus and CTO Andrew Mann. Their experience transitioning EA infrastructure and games to the cloud laid the groundwork for the company's DevOps technology that supports both enterprise developers and IT operations teams for more rapid, iterative, efficient and responsive infrastructure and release process management. DivvyCloud has raised angel funding of $800,000, and is currently closing another round of VC funding from investors including CIT GAP Funds, Core Capital, New Dominion Angels and individuals. The company has five employees, and says it plans to hire another five people in the near future. Products DivvyCloud has a message for large enterprises and service providers that don't think their developers and teams are using the cloud: leakage through cloud-provider consoles, APIs, auto-scaling and shadow IT means they are already in the cloud (it just isn't necessarily sanctioned, compliant or secured). In response, DivvyCloud says its software can run on the back end, even with other automation technologies such as CliQr, ServiceMesh or Amazon Web Services console in use, and provide a real-time view of resources as things occur, as well as response automation for self-healing infrastructure. DivvyCloud says its software can also serve as a policy or sanity check for central IT and leadership without getting in the way of developers, engineers and teams. The company's DCMP supports a broad range of cloud-computing infrastructures, including Amazon Web Services, Digital Ocean, Exoscale, Google Compute Engine, HP Helion, Linode, Microsoft Azure, OpenStack and Rackspace. The software allows users to unify clouds and bring consistency to rules and permissions for use. DCMP provides a single command console, and from there, IT and cloud-operations teams can provision, manage, troubleshoot and organize public and private cloud resources. DivvyCloud's console represents its 'single pane of glass' that gives users control and visibility for Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 2
resources across various public and private clouds. Using access rights, the console can support management of clouds, instances, volumes, snapshots, security groups, public IP addresses, users and networks and subnetworks. DivvyCloud's software also supports dependency mapping so users can identify resource dependencies across the various clouds in use, either from core resources downstream or from end nodes upstream. Interdependencies are mapped intuitively and graphically, or can also be exported to comma-separated value (CSV) format for reporting. DivvyCloud highlights agentless instance-performance monitoring across different clouds in use with performance data that is automatically aggregated across the entire cloud footprint. Data is also analyzed to support identification of performance issues, optimization and cost savings. The company provides change-history information for insight into who's doing what with various infrastructures, which can help reduce complexity and the time needed for compliance reports, since audit logs can be exported to CSV. In terms of capabilities, DivvyCloud says a primary use of its DCMP is capturing and controlling cloud sprawl, including all existing cloud-resources data, which is continuously collected and unified in a database. DivvyCloud refers to 'pervasive infrastructure management,' which identifies and manages a variety of resources regardless of their origin native cloud console, cloud management platform, command line or API. As part of its focus primarily on infrastructure and production, DivvyCloud's software supports self-service, application development and production management. To support event-driven, self-healing infrastructure, DivvyCloud leverages a real-time, unified data model that allows events to trigger automated actions. The software also supports on-demand policy management so users can retrofit new security or operational policies across different clouds. Other DivvyCloud capabilities include user management with SSH keys across thousands of instances; instance power control to run on a temporary and scheduled basis for reduced operational cost; allocation and tracking of resources and costs by project, business unit or other unit; scheduled events such as temporary security rules, volume backup and retention policies and instance lifecycle management; and instance templates that can be defined with custom scripts to ease their launch. DivvyCloud offers its DCMP via software subscription based on the scope of the infrastructure that is managed. While currently offered primarily as an on-premises offering, DivvyCloud is also in beta for a hosted version on AWS Marketplace, and a formal SaaS version of DivvyCloud is on the roadmap for 2015. Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 3
Customers DivvyCloud reports seven paying customers, including one that is a Fortune 50 enterprise and five that were signed in the first quarter of 2015. The company says most customers are working to operationalize cloud computing to deal with the IT leakage of one-off and shadow IT use. This normalization of the cloud must be secure and support self-service and automation, according to DivvyCloud. The company credits its software's ease of use for converting customers from Amazon Web Services, OpenStack or other native cloud management consoles to its own DivvyCloud CMP console. DivvyCloud reports both service provider and enterprise customers. Service providers typically use DivvyCloud to manage private clouds for customers, and to consolidate cloud accounts into a single operations framework. Enterprise customers are typically focused on responding to one-off and shadow IT uses of cloud-computing resources by developers, lines of business and other internal users and teams. Efficiency is a key objective for these organizations, as they contemplate the people required to support rapidly expanding infrastructure needs. Key customers for DivvyCloud include Broadsword Online Games, BlackMesh and Dynamo Technologies. Competition With cloud management at its core, DivvyCloud competes primarily with other CMPs, including Cisco, CloudVelox, CSC ServiceMesh, Dell Cloud Manager, Hashicorp Atlas, Red Hat CloudForms, RightScale, Scalr, Verizon and VMware. Although DivvyCloud may be used along with them, its focus on infrastructure automation also means competition with vendors in that space, such as Ansible, Chef, Puppet Labs, SaltStack, StackIQ and StackStorm. Its focus on automation and DevOps means competition with other cloud management, orchestration and automation vendors, including 2nd Watch, Automic, BMC, BitRock, C3DNA, CA Technologies, CliQr Technologies, ElasticBox, Electric Cloud, fluid Operations, HP, IBM, JumpCloud, OutSystems, Plutora, QualiSystems, Ravello Systems, ScriptRock, Skytap, Stackify, UShareSoft and XebiaLabs. SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses DivvyCloud's software and support address some of the most common challenges and objectives for large enterprises in cloud computing, including shadow IT, self-service and security. DivvyCloud is a smaller, lesser-known vendor in a crowded field of cloud management, orchestration, automation and DevOps players large and small. Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 4
Opportunities Threats DivvyCloud is well-positioned to take on much of the cloud management and automation aspects of growing DevOps deployments by integrating and partnering with other technologies and partners. Cloud management is being built into more of what cloud-orchestration, automation and continuous-delivery providers offer customers, and this could broaden or intensify the competition for CMP vendors such as DivvyCloud. Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 5
Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; 2015. This report was originally published within 451 Research's Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: www.451research.com Copyright 2015 - The 451 Group 6