Blog
April 10, 2022
Puppet Will Be Acquired!
Puppet + Perforce
Read the press release announcing Puppet's agreement to be acquired by Perforce.
When I started at Puppet three years ago, I saw a company with a tremendous customer base, an active open source community, an incredible reputation, products that solved some of the hardest problems in the operations space, and a passionate team that had deep values and was purpose-driven, both of which are at my core as a leader.
Over the years I coined the phrase “fearless and open innovation” when discussing Puppet and our mission because that’s what we do. We allow customers to move quickly in a risk mitigated manner (without fear), in an open way (not just with open source but with open APIs and a focus on interoperability) so they can innovate and stay ahead of the competition. My years as a CIO taught me that peace of mind is essential when you are holding up some of the most mission-critical apps in the world, and that’s one thing Puppet delivers again and again.
As Puppet’s leader, my job has been to deliver on our promise to take our customers from where they are to where they need to be. Effective delivery required Puppet to stay ahead of rising trends that impact infrastructure and operations teams, and the larger DevOps market in general. This was not an easy task in a world so rapidly and deeply changed by the pandemic. Staying on top required that Puppet move into new areas to extend our value proposition across increasingly hybrid environments while delivering more prescriptive business value to customers in adjacent areas. Our response? New innovative offerings for our customers, including Impact Analysis and Puppet Enterprise Advanced.
Our collective efforts have fueled over $100 million in annual recurring revenue and the customers we serve are some of the most impressive organizations on the planet. I am proud of our accomplishments, and yet as I surveyed the marketplace it became clear we are only scratching the surface of what our customers want and need. Customers must move to the cloud at a dizzying pace and they are drowning in a sea of DevOps tools. What they need is not a plethora of tool vendors but a strategic platform partner who can offer them the breadth and depth of DevOps solutions essential to winning in the fast-changing markets they play in.
What began as a journey to address our customers' needs through increased investment in Puppet has emerged as a compelling opportunity to join forces with Perforce Software. Perforce’s mission is to help technology teams solve the hardest problems in DevOps, so nothing stalls innovation. Similar to Puppet, Perforce has an incredible customer base and is a trusted DevOps leader delivering digital creation & planning, developer productivity tools, and automated testing & quality.
The missing link? Puppet’s sweet spot: infrastructure as code.
But a good technology match is not enough to make for a good marriage. Having done over 15 acquisitions in my career, success requires alignment of vision and values and we have that in spades. Puppet and Perforce both have a deep focus on outstanding customer service, open and transformational leadership and a people-first culture that empowers team members to do their best work as part of a community that cares.
There was a point in time where many of us, myself included, thought Puppet would be one of the great IPOs to come out of the Pacific Northwest. And for a company of our size, we’ve always punched above our weight. Luke Kanies, the founder of Puppet, was one of the original creators of the DevOps movement. With our iconic State of DevOps Report that has been produced for a decade, Puppet has massively influenced not just our slice of the DevOps market but DevOps as a whole. DevOps wouldn’t be where it is today without Puppet. But what matters long-term is not what financial milestones fuel a company’s growth. What matters long-term is that we continue to empower our customers to be leaders in their markets and that we provide our team members with some of the best years of their careers. This is what we have the potential to do with Perforce in a way that we could not have done on our own.
I could not be more proud of the success we’ve brought to the industry and I couldn’t be more bullish on what we can continue to deliver to the market as part of the Perforce family with our steadfast focus on solving hard problems and providing infrastructure and operations teams peace of mind. I know that there will be many questions asked around this, so below I have a short FAQ on this announcement in case you are just catching the news here.
But before I end this letter: to those who have been following Puppet over the years, I want to say thank you. Thank you to Luke Kanies who had the courage and tenacity to do the hard work to create a new market and who trusted me to lead the company forward these last few years. Thank you to the Puppet open source community and our customers who have fueled our growth from day one. Thank you to the many team members (current employees, alumni, and fans) who have been the heart and soul of Puppet to this point. Thank you to our investors for believing and supporting us along this journey. And thank you to my amazing family (including my three now teenage kids) who supported me through the highs and lows of these last three years and gave me the opportunity to “do it all.”
Collectively, we’ve created an industry, changed the lives of so many for the better, empowered people to dream bigger, and the best is yet to come as Puppet joins Perforce.
Exciting times! Yvonne Wassenaar (aka “Y”), CEO, Puppet
FAQ: Puppet to Be Acquired by Perforce
What was announced? Perforce announced an agreement to acquire Puppet. Within Perforce, Puppet will be run as a business unit delivering Puppet branded infrastructure automation solutions alongside several other DevOps business units within the company. The completion of the acquisition is expected in the second quarter of 2022 pending regulatory approvals. Perforce will move from a 1,200-person company to a 1,700-person company with the addition of Puppet.
Combined, the two companies’ solutions scale a broad spectrum of the DevOps lifecycle. Both companies’ solutions are used to support mission-critical applications and services across various industries around the globe.
What are the terms of the acquisition?
The terms of the transaction are confidential.
What is Perforce?
Perforce solutions power the technology that drives the digital economy. The company’s comprehensive DevOps portfolio and deep domain expertise drives quality, security, compliance, collaboration, and speed – across the technology lifecycle.
Perforce has a 25 year-plus history of developing and supporting developer productivity tools.
How do the two technologies complement each other?
Puppet is a strong fit with Perforce as it augments the Perforce portfolio with new capability for enterprise DevOps teams to manage and secure their critical infrastructure. The combined portfolio allows Perforce to continue its focus on DevOps at scale and solve some of the hardest automation challenges in the world’s largest enterprises.
What does this mean for Puppet customers, partners, and the Puppet open source community?
The acquisition benefits Puppet customers, partners, and the open source community by enhancing Puppet’s existing solutions, accelerating the development of future products, and providing access to the broader portfolio of Perforce offerings.
Perforce and Puppet will continue delivering the products and features that enable our customers to continuously deliver, make compliant, remediate, and manage hybrid-cloud environments. The combined team is committed to continuing to set the standard for delivering and managing infrastructure estates predictably at scale. This includes the support of the open source community that has made Puppet the leader in infrastructure automation.
How Perforce Solves DevOps Challenges
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