Puppet Labs Banks $40M for IT Automation

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Puppet Labs, a Portland, Ore.-based provider of IT infrastructure automation software, announced today that it had raised $40 million in a Series E round of financing from a pool of backers that reads like a who’s who of the tech and venture capital communities.

Investors included Cisco, Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Triangle Venture Capital Group, True Ventures and VMware, stated the company. Since 2009, Puppet Labs has raised $86 million.

The funding will go toward hiring talent and growing the company, an effort that includes a global expansion to meet demand for the Puppet Lab’s wares, particularly in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Mukesh Sharma, formerly of EMC and the ex-COO of Canopy, was named vice president of sales to head the company’s efforts in the EMEA region. Puppet Labs also plans to move into a new headquarters that is twice as large as its current facilities in Portland.

Last year, the firm acquired Cloudsmith, makers of the DevOps-friendly integrated development environment (IDE) Geppetto, to extend its reach into the cloud. In the wake of the deal, Luke Kanies, CEO and founder of Puppet Labs, told Datamation’s Sean Michael Kerner that the Puppet-Cloudsmith combo will allow his company to deliver automation products that streamline DevOps, resulting in the faster delivery of applications.

“As DevOps lowers the barriers between IT development and operations teams, Cloudsmith’s expertise and technologies are a great complement to Puppet Labs’ operations experience and products,” he said.

Today, Kaines is singing a similar tune. “Sysadmins in all industries are eager to spend less time firefighting, and more time shipping great software to their customers,” while business executives seek solutions that enable them to quickly adapt to market conditions, he said in a company blog post.

“We’re here to serve the needs of both the people who care for the software delivery pipeline and those who care for the business,” he added.

Puppet’s approach is paying off, according to Kaines. His company’s software “is used today to manage everything from development environments in early-stage startups to massive data centers at Google, CERN, international trading houses and thousands of other diverse organizations,” he boasted.

Other high-profile customers include AT&T, Twitter, Salesforce and Verizon. In total, Puppet claims that over 18,000 organizations, including half of the Fortune 100, are using its technology.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.