Boston, MA – (January 21, 202) – Fairwinds, which provides Kubernetes configuration validation software backed by a suite of services and open source tooling, experienced important year-over-year growth in 2020 with a 123 percent net customer retention rate. From the first half of 2020 to the second half of 2020, bookings for the company’s configuration validation SaaS offering increased 297 percent. In a year that business around the world changed, Fairwinds made considerable contributions to the Kubernetes ecosystem with its product portfolio including Fairwinds Insights, open source projects like Polaris and Goldilocks, and Kubernetes expertise.
Containerization has continued to experience significant growth with Kubernetes as the de facto orchestration platform. According to Gartner, “By 2023, more than 70 percent of global organizations will be running more than two containerized applications in production, up from less than 20 percent in 2019.” Fairwinds strategic achievements in 2020 enable it to continue to provide Kubernetes standardization around configuration, implementation and maintenance.
Fairwinds 2020 milestones include:
Celebrated 5 years of enabling organizations to move to cloud-native infrastructure.
Rounded out its executive leadership team with the addition of Mary Henry as CFO and Elisa Hebert as the company’s vice president of engineering operations.
Launched and updated Fairwinds Insights, the company's configuration validation software to enforce Kubernetes best practices for security, compliance, and policy. Fairwinds Insights adds new capabilities at each stage of the deployment lifecycle, including CI/CD integrations to address DevSecOps use cases, Open Policy Agent (OPA) support and an Admission Controller.
Supported customers across its suite of offerings, including Flatfile, which uses Fairwinds Insights to audit and baseline Kubernetes cluster configurations, and Noonlight, a Managed Kubernetes client that received Kubernetes implementation support as well as ongoing training and advisory on infrastructure improvements.
Expanded its open source software suite with four new offerings (Gemini, Nova, Astro and Pluto) and updated both Goldilocks and Polaris.
Grew its GitHub community to more than 4,000 members and doubled engineering activities (including more than 700 commits) on its popular Polaris configuration offering.
Created and launched the industry’s first end-to-end Kubernetes Maturity Model to help organizations identify where they are in their Kubernetes journey and what to prepare for next.
Announced Fairwinds Kubernetes Audit and Improve, a software and services combo that helps teams avoid unnecessary trial and error with their Kubernetes deployments and realize the full benefits of Kubernetes infrastructure.
Introduced Kubernetes Clinics to offer DevOps and engineering leaders with technical content that deepens their understanding and usage of K8s.
Received industry validation from the Tech Ascension Awards and DevOps Dozen which collectively recognized both Fairwinds’ SaaS and open source offerings.
Supported a COVID-19 Hackathon with partners GitLab, Datadog and Amazon Web Services (AWS) that encouraged innovative thinkers to develop Kubernetes-based web applications to address the pandemic.
Listened to the Movement for Black Lives and responded with help to ensure equity in the technology industry through the establishment of the Fairwinds Scholarship to the Turing School of Software and Design.
“Container adoption continues to escalate quickly and Kubernetes is the de facto orchestration platform for developers that are building and shipping containers,” said Bill Ledingham, CEO of Fairwinds. “In 2021, more than ever, it’s critical that enterprises engage with Kubernetes experts like Fairwinds to ensure they can ship their cloud native applications faster, more cost effectively and with less risk. Our knowledge and proven Kubernetes track record with open source projects like Polaris will drive adoption of our Fairwinds Insights software so we can help organizations across their entire development/deployment lifecycle.”
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