DevOps Specialist XebiaLabs 'Aggressively' Ramping Up Channel Efforts After $100M Funding Round

XebiaLabs is on a channel growth tear after capturing $100 million in a Series B funding round this week following back-to-back years of over 100 percent revenue growth.

"We're really trying to build scale through partners and really grow our business both from a technical capability standpoint as well as a go-to-market and revenue standpoint with partners as aggressively as we can," said XebiaLabs CEO Derek Langone, in an interview with CRN.

The Burlington, Mass.-based enterprise DevOps specialist -- who was named a 'Leader' in Gartner's 2017 Magic Quadrant for Application Release Automation -- grew sales by a whopping 117 percent in 2017 year-over-year with no plans of slowing down.

Arthur Alvarez, director of sales and marketing at Zivra LLC, a Chicago-based solution provider and XebiaLabs partner, said enterprise customers are starting to bet big on XebiaLabs.

[Related: Here's Who Made Gartner's 2018 Magic Quadrant For Hyper-Converged Infrastructure]

"Enterprises are starting to recognize that there are many smaller, nimbler companies out there that are able to offer more cost efficient and more responsive solutions to meet their needs," said Alvarez. "I expect that XebiaLabs is going to gain that market leadership in enterprise DevOps."

With 200 global customers, including Bank of America, GE, United Health, Toyota and NASA, XebiaLabs will be investing heavily in its Partner Program and channel outreaching in 2018 through its newly acquired $100 million in capital funding unveiled on Feb. 12. The Series B funding round was led by Susquehanna Growth Equity and Accel.

"We're going to add a lot more headcount and level of sophistication to our partner program to make sure we're going out and courting newer partners and supporting the partners we have," said Langone.

Langone said he's currently looking to onboard partners who focus on selling application performance monitoring, application release automation and automating testing solutions, as well as large system integrators, to name a few.

The software company owns several products including its flagship XebiaLabs DevOps platform which provides intelligence, automation and control for continuous delivery at enterprise scale. The platform provides the backbone for DevOps release automation, complements existing tools, and enables full visibility across the entire software delivery process.

"From a channel perspective, they work really well with our team," said Alvarez. "They do a great job following up and working together to provide a customer with a complete solution from a product perspective coupled with our services. It's a perfect blend."

Founded in 2008, XebiaLabs was also one of the first application release automation vendors, making an early name for itself with its agentless approach to managing deployments, according to Gartner. XebiaLabs's new XL Deploy and XL Release versions includes several enhancements including assessment analytics, enhancements to code-centric management capabilities and broadening integration support.

"The market is just now really starting to accelerate and it's growing exponentially," said Langone. "We feel like we'll continue to execute well in that market, continue to innovate as much as we can and we'll take our fair share ... I feel like 100 percent growth or better from 2017 to 2018 is realistic."