Software delivery system Harness purchased Armory, a continuous deployment company based in Spinnaker, today. According to Harness CEO and founder, Jyoti Bansal, the transaction cost $7 million in cash. B Capital led a $40 million Series C financing in late 2020, giving Armory around $82 million. Lead Edge Capital, Insight Partners, Crosslink Capital, Bain, Mango, Y Combinator, and Javelin Venture Partners also invested.
Harness will recruit numerous armory personnel and assist armory installations. However, Bansal highlighted that this is an asset sale. He hopes many of Armory’s customers will switch to Harness, but he also wants to aid them. “Our main goal is to maintain customer relationships and service. If we treat clients well, they may become greater Harness platform users, and Harness offers several services to support these accounts, Bansal added.
Wind River ex-CEO Jim Douglas succeeded co-founder Daniel R. Odio as Armory’s CEO in 2021. Armory serves LaunchDarkly, Autodesk, Informatica, Patreon, First Republic Bank, and HelloSign.
This purchase also follows the general corporate software ecosystem trend of favoring end-to-end solutions over single-point solutions as organizations consolidate and save costs. “The market is growing for DevOps solutions, but single-point solutions are hard to compete with,” Bansal added. “Many startups have struggled to raise capital in the current economy. It’s good and awful. It’s fantastic for Harness, but from a startup ecosystem perspective, there are hurdles, and firms must operate at a higher level than before.
Harness may incorporate some of Armory’s technology into its products, and Bansal thinks the experienced Armory engineers Harness expects to recruit will help it innovate and assist Armory customers.
Bansal said he wants to turn Harness into a long-lasting, public corporation. He attempted it earlier, but Cisco bought AppDynamics for $3.7 billion before its IPO.