It’s Official: Rafay’s Cloud-based Kubernetes Management Solution is a Hit With Enterprises (800% ARR growth YoY)

Years ago at another company where my co-founder, Hemanth Kavuluru, and I built the security industry’s first software-defined perimeter (SDP) platform, we spent just as much time wrestling with application and infrastructure orchestration as we did developing the solution we were actually selling.

Back then, Kubernetes wasn’t yet a thing, but a number of container orchestration platforms were in use by early adopters. We subsequently witnessed the birth of Kubernetes, but were disappointed to see that open source and first-generation commercial solutions for Kubernetes management didn’t solve core issues related to multi-cluster management, fleet scalability, zero-trust security, and Kubernetes distro interoperability. When you see a problem so clearly, you have no choice but to try to solve it. “If not you, then who?” as they say. So, after much research and deliberation, we decided we would focus all our time and effort in building the simplest, most turnkey SaaS platform for modern application deployment and (Kubernetes) cluster management in the market. And that’s how Rafay Systems was started.

Since then, working in partnership with our early customers to solve real-world Kubernetes management problems, we’ve made tremendous progress building Kubernetes expertise, a stellar team, and one of the broadest offerings in the market. Feedback for our enterprise-grade Kubernetes management solution, the Rafay Kubernetes Management Cloud (KMC), couldn’t be more positive.

Today I’m extremely proud to share that Team Rafay achieved 2020 fiscal year annual revenue growth of 800% over fiscal year 2019, with a 100% customer retention rate. Key sectors of growth included financial services, high-technology, defense, telecommunications and healthcare sectors. During that time, customer engagement also grew significantly as the average number of Kubernetes clusters under management per customer more than doubled during the year.

Over the past year we’ve also expanded our partner program through technology partnerships with Hashicorp, GitLab, CircleCI and Datadog. We also expanded our partnership with Amazon and are now an AWS Partner in the AWS Partner Network (APN) with AWS Outposts Ready designation. AWS customers can try the Rafay platform via AWS Quickstart, and can transact with Rafay through the AWS Marketplace.

The last year has been an incredible amount of work for every single person in the company. We onboarded a number of happy enterprise customers, service providers, and partners, and every single team member played a critical role in closing every deal. Great companies are built by teams that take absolute ownership of the task at hand and consistently beat expectations, and Team Rafay has overachievers galore. Sincere thanks go to my fantastic colleagues who strive every day to make our customers successful, and to our amazing customers with whom we work shoulder-to-shoulder in operationalizing their modern infrastructure.

All of us at Rafay are committed to helping companies deploy Kubernetes with ease, reduce security & operational risk, and control the cost of managing Kubernetes. We are looking forward to a great 2021 and beyond — and invite you to join us on the journey!