DEVOPSdigest

Redgate is investing US$10 million in the acquisition and ongoing development of the biggest cross-platform database migrations tool, Flyway.

Already widely known for its SQL Server expertise, the move will accelerate Redgate’s plans to enable the database to be included in DevOps, whatever database its customers are working on.

DevOps is increasingly being adopted by software development teams because the collaboration and cooperation between development and operations that it encourages enables organizations to improve the speed and reliability of software delivery so that they can get value to market quicker. Database development is often a stumbling block in the process and hence the interest in solutions that allow it to be included.

One such solution is Flyway which was originally developed as an open source project by Axel Fontaine to make database migrations easy on multiple platforms, and which has seen an estimated 23 million downloads of its free community edition. It also has a growing list of commercial customers using its paid-for editions, leading to a significant growth in revenue over the last 12 to 18 months.

Flyway supports a wide range of databases, from Oracle to MySQL, PostgreSQL to Amazon Redshift, and the acquisition will enable Redgate to extend its product roadmap beyond database DevOps for SQL Server to new database platforms. Redgate wants its ambitious plans to reinforce Flyway’s place as the open source database migrations tool of choice.

As Simon Galbraith, CEO and Co-Founder of Redgate, comments: “We’ve spent the last five years developing a portfolio of SQL Server tools that enable developers to include the database in DevOps, and we want to give those same advantages to every developer on any platform. With Flyway, we’ve just taken a huge leap forward in that direction.”

Axel Fontaine will now work on Flyway alongside a development team at Redgate and he sees the move as the next natural step. “Redgate has years of experience in the database market and also has the resources to further develop and enhance Flyway many times faster than I can. This will make both the community and the commercial editions better for everyone.”

Redgate will continue to maintain a free version of Flyway, available under the open source Apache v2 license, and is committed to supporting and growing the open source community that has helped in its development. It already offers free versions of tools that work with open source software, like MySQL Compare, and was instrumental in backing the development of Glimpse, the open source diagnostic platform for the web.

It also provides financial and development backing for other tools that help in database development. These include tSQLt, the database unit testing framework, SQL Cover, the code coverage tool for T-SQL, and tSQLt Test Adapter, the Visual Studio tool for discovering and executing tSQLt tests.

While the acquisition of Flyway is a major move by Redgate, the company will retain its focus on strengthening and extending its portfolio of SQL Server tools, which are used by 91% of businesses in the Fortune 100. As Simon Galbraith explains: “Our work on the SQL Server platform is the foundation for everything we do. The Flyway acquisition now opens the door to seeing where that knowledge can be used to develop tools for other database platforms, based on what works best with SQL Server first.”