When Carbon Relay launched at the beginning of 2019, its mission was to optimize energy usage in data centers via an artificially intelligent "digital agent" that could quickly make cost- and energy-efficient decisions. By February of this year, it had pivoted slightly, now with the goal of using machine learning and data science to optimize applications running in Kubernetes, an open-source platform that automates Linux container operations.
Carbon Relay is now going all in on cloud-native application performance testing and optimization. It just acquired StormForger GmbH, a 10-person startup in Germany that has developed a "performance-testing-as-a-service" platform. Carbon Relay is also acquiring the startup's name: It's rebranding as StormForge.
"Our users and our customers, as they're moving toward cloud-native and adopting Kubernetes and on this journey, we see that journey as the 'storm,'" said co-founder and CEO Matt Provo. "What's taking place through the platform, hopefully, is the 'forging' of that complexity with intelligence, and that results in this platform that people can come back to and continue trusting."
StormForge had previously delved into the world of load testing via partnerships with Gatling and others, Provo said. With the acquisition of StormForger GmbH, the startup can integrate load testing right into its platform.
Load testing refers to how software engineers test different scenarios that might strain their platforms. Take, for example, a Black Friday sale — or perhaps Cyber Monday would be a better example. Potentially millions more users than normal, a.k.a. heavy "loads," might take to Walmart.com in pursuit of deals on gaming consoles and rowing machines. With load testing platforms like StormForge's, engineers can run simulations to see at what points different pieces of the Walmart.com platform might break and strengthen those points in advance.
"I think the beauty of the situation is that we have experience and we've built things [StormForger GmbH has] always wanted to, and they have experience and have built things that we need and we haven't built," Provo said. "With the partnership between the two companies, we've started seeing traction and prospects with customers."
StormForger GmbH had 10 full-time employees and another 10 to 15 contractors prior to the acquisition, which has already closed; StormForge did not disclose financial terms. Provo expects to bring on all of those workers as full-time StormForge employees. The integrated company will also maintain an entity in Germany to serve as a gateway to the European market. Provo said his team is looking to acquire customers in Germany, the U.K. and other parts of Europe.
In concert with the acquisition announcement, StormForge also announced the launch of a major open-source project related to how application traffic, or load, is recorded and stored in a production environment.
Founded in 2015, StormForge has offices in Boston and Washington, D.C. The startup took on a $63 million equity investment from Insight Partners in February and has since exploded, growing 400 percent in terms of headcount and more than 250 percent in terms of customer base, Provo said. All of that is in spite of fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic — a fact Provo is clearly humbled by.
"I joke around with [StormForger GmbH's two founders, Sebastian Cohnen and Lars Wolff,] that it's been strange enough to hire as many people as we have this year, many of whom we've never met because of the pandemic," Provo said. "Then to acquire a company in the same set of circumstances has been unique. It's a testament to the synergies between the two companies."
