Electric Cloud

Electric Cloud, Inc. operated as a specialized software company focused on the DevOps market, specifically in application release automation (ARA) and continuous delivery. The company was founded on April 29, 2002, by John Ousterhout, known for creating the Tcl scripting language, and John Graham-Cumming. Their base of operations was in San Jose, California.

The firm's business centered on developing tools to automate and accelerate the software delivery process for enterprise clients. Its clientele included major corporations like E*TRADE, GM, Hyundai, Intel, and Samsung. Revenue was generated through the sale and subscription of its software solutions designed to streamline complex software build, test, and deployment pipelines. The company addressed the need for greater speed and efficiency in software development, helping organizations reduce time-to-market and the risks associated with software releases.

Electric Cloud's product portfolio was headlined by two primary offerings: ElectricFlow and ElectricAccelerator. ElectricFlow served as an enterprise-grade platform for continuous delivery and application release orchestration, allowing teams to manage and automate the entire software release lifecycle. ElectricAccelerator was engineered to dramatically reduce software build and test times by intelligently parallelizing these tasks across available CPU resources, both on-premises and in the cloud. This product was particularly valued in sectors with large codebases, such as the embedded software and gaming industries.

A significant milestone for the company was its acquisition by CloudBees in April 2019. This move was part of a broader industry trend of consolidation in the DevOps space. The acquisition integrated Electric Cloud's release orchestration and automation capabilities into the CloudBees suite, aiming to create an end-to-end provider of continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), and ARA solutions. Before the acquisition, Electric Cloud had raised $64.6 million from various venture partners.

Keywords: DevOps, application release automation, continuous delivery, software delivery management, release orchestration, ElectricFlow, ElectricAccelerator, continuous integration, build acceleration, test automation, software production management, ARA, CD, CI/CD, enterprise software, software deployment, application lifecycle management, Sacha Labourey, John Ousterhout, CloudBees