As the CEO at Sonatype, I have long believed that software is the last path to differentiation in every industry. From banking to manufacturing to healthcare to entertainment, companies capable of delivering innovative software applications are disrupting established players and growing shareholder value.

To survive and compete effectively, organizations are placing intense pressure upon IT leaders to accelerate the pace of software innovation. In response, companies are hiring armies of software developers, consuming unprecedented amounts of open source components, and embracing DevOps patterns and practices to continuously deliver applications to production.

Simply stated, every company in the world today (whether they know it, or not) is a software company, and it's why the market for DevOps and DevSecOps automation is such a huge blue ocean opportunity powered by a rapidly rising tide.

Need proof that DevOps is shifting into the mainstream? Just consider what's happened in the past 4 months:

• June 4, 2018: Microsoft announced plans to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion.
• June 27, 2018: CloudBees raised $62 million to automate CI/CD workflows.
• June 27, 2018: Puppet raised $42M to expand its DevOps automation platform.
• September 7, 2018: Sonatype raised $80 million to help DevOps teams improve application security by automating open source governance.
• September 19, 2018: GitLab raised $100 million to help companies plan and automate various aspects of DevOps development.
• October 4, 2018: Jfrog raised $165 million in a series D round of funding led by Insight Venture Partners to help teams continuously deliver software.

Like others who have created tools to help organizations accelerate and automate DevOps style innovation—Sonatype is incredibly well positioned to continue growing into the future. Different from others, Sonatype is deeply committed to the idea that DevOps is not an excuse to do application security poorly—rather it is an opportunity to do security better than ever—and fast too!

Going forward, we will continue to stick to our unique style of knitting by remaining laser-focused on three things:

1. integrating the world's most precise open source intelligence into best of breed DevOps pipeline tools.
2. enabling DevOps teams to automatically enforce open source governance policies at scale across every phase of the DevOps pipeline.
3. helping our customers innovate faster by continuously harnessing all of the good that open source has to offer, without any of the risk.

They say you're defined by the company you keep. I think they're right. On behalf of everyone at Sonatype, I can assure you that we're thrilled to be swimming in such vibrant waters—and we're excited to see where the journey leads.