JFrog leaps ahead with US offices, new investment from VMware

Analyst: Jay Lyman 29 Sep, 2014

Repository and binary management vendor JFrog continues to grow, thanks largely to its new US offices and continued growth of modern, agile, DevOps technologies and methodologies among more mainstream and larger enterprises. In July, JFrog announced $7m series B funding from VMware and previous investor Gemini Israel Ventures. JFrog says the funding has helped it to grow its technology and business to more broadly support continuous integration. With its initial seed funding and series A, the company has raised a total of $12m to date. JFrog has 60 employees.

JFrog, which sells subscriptions for its Artifactory repository and binary management software and Bintray binary and package Distribution as a Service platform, says it has grown along with increased adoption of agile IT and DevOps methodology. JFrog, based in Israel and California, reports particular growth of its US business with its Santa Clara office, which the company opened in 2012.

The 451 Take

JFrog is well positioned with its code, version and repository management software, all of which are important to continuous integration and DevOps methodologies that have become a priority for enterprises. Among JFrog’s biggest challenges has been its size and low profile among large enterprise users, but recent investment and integration with VMware undoubtedly expands the small company’s potential profile and market.JFrog must compete with other options for continuous integration and DevOps support, including PaaS and Docker containerization, but there is al so ample opportunity for integration and partnership with the many other players.

Products

JFrog says its main objective with its main product, Artifactory, is to provide a consistent flow for software code and artifacts to mature and make it through to deployment. In doing so, Artifactory supports an automated software distribution and tool chain that can speed up development and deployment. With a priority on time and speed, Artifactory’s main benefit is automation and supporting agile processes at the code and binary level.

Artifactory is a binary repository manager that allows developers and IT teams to manage, control, store, host and use binaries and artifacts from test and development through to production and deployment. Key features and capabilities of Artifactory include consistent access to application components used with build tools by developers, remote access that caches artifacts locally for reuse without requiring downloads, advanced security features to control access to artifacts and where they are deployed, support for heavy loads and bursts with high concurrency and data integrity, and searchable XML metadata search with user-defined properties for easier access to artifacts.

JFrog reports some customers using Artifactory to consolidate their efforts to track and manage dependencies, changes and versions. Artifactory supports a number of languages and frameworks, including Apache Ant,NuGet, Gradle, Java, Maven and Ruby. Artifactory also works with version control and management systems such as Git, Perforce and Subversion, as well as continuous integration servers and systems includingBamboo, Codeship, Hudson, Jenkins, TeamCity, Team Foundation Server and Travis. Artifactory also recently added support for Docker, Debian Linux and the Python language following user and customer requests, JFrog says. The company also reports demand and growth of its high-availability version, Artifactory HA.

With its newer Bintray software and products, JFrog allows developers and teams to more easily access and download open source software packages with support for publishing and distribution. Bintray is based on a REST API that allows the software to integrate with build systems and processes so artifacts can be automatically downloaded and uploaded. The software can integrate with binary management software such as GitHub and Bitbucket for seamless interaction and importation of binaries, metadata and release notes. Bintray can also automate software distribution with the ability to manage uploads and access to binaries via private repositories. Bintray also provides loads and statistics to provide visibility into who is using which binaries, when they download them, which versions are in use and more over any time frame.

JFrog’s software is available as an on-premises offering or as Cloud. On-premises subscriptions and pricing range from Artifactory Pro for $2,750 per year to Artifactory Silver ($7,450/year) and Gold ($11,990/year) with advanced support options. Artifactory HA is JFrog’s enterprise offering and is priced at $25,900 per year for three servers with full support and HA capability. JFrog’s Cloud software is offered via $98 monthly subscription or dedicated server priced on a per-case basis.

Customers and partners

JFrog says it has about 800 paying customers and expects to cross the 1,000-customer threshold by the end of this year. Geographically, it reports 75-80% of business is in North America, with the rest mainly in Europe and Asia-Pacific, where the company has plans to grow its presence. Large customers include Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Cray, LinkedIn, Motorola, Nike, Oracle, Standard & Poor’s and Twitter.

JFrog reports both proactive and reactive DevOps adopters that are responding to developer and internal team use of public cloud and other resources by building and managing their own private clouds. At the end of the day, organizations want the access, availability, elasticity, scalability and other advantages of cloud computing, but want it private and under their own control.

JFrog says it continues to benefit its partnership with code scanning and management vendor Black Duck, including extension of its support for .Net, which is also a customer demand. JFrog has also joined the Cloud Foundry Foundation, which is backing the popular, open source PaaS software that is also the basis of several commercial offerings.

Competition

JFrog’s main competitor continues to be Sonatype, which despite more of a security focus, continues to target code repository management with its backing of the open source Maven repository software and its Nexus commercial offerings. With a larger role in continuous integration, JFrog may also face competition from testing-focused DevOps vendors such as Dell, Electric Cloud, Plutora, QualiSystems and Skytap. While there is potential for integration or partnership, particularly with Cloud Foundry-based PaaS providers such as Active State’s Stackato, IBM’s Bluemix and Pivotal, JFrog also faces competition from enterp rise PaaS providers such as Apprenda, Engine Yard, Red Hat with OpenShift and salesforce.com with Heroku.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths

With its binary repository management and developer software, JFrog sits at an integral point in Agile and DevOps workflows that are becoming a bigger priority for mainstream and large enterprises.

Weaknesses

JFrog remains small in a DevOps and Agile software development space that is already crowded with both startups and established vendors.

Opportunities

Continued growth and expansion of DevOps methodologies and technologies among enterprise and mid-market customers offers JFrog a growing, greenfield market.

Threats

Inclusion or focus on code repository management by another large vendor, startup or open source project could intensify compet ition.