2018 Tech Impact Awards, Cloud: Heptio

This article appears in print in the October 2018 issue. See more about the winners of the 2018 Tech Impact Awards here. Click here for a free subscription.

Heptio
Location: Seattle
Employees: 90

Craig McLuckie has a rare objective for this startup: to make the transformative chores his IT product performs turn dull.

Infrastructure should be boring, says Heptios CEO. Thats kind of our goal.

McLuckie and cofounder Joe Beda are two of the three creators of Kubernetes, a software tool that orchestrates launching of applications across dozens, even thousands, of a data centers machines. Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for managing containers, an emerging and highly efficient architecture for cloud software.

For the banks, manufacturers, retailers and others Heptio serves, tech has become a strategic asset. These enterprises employ tens of thousands of developers, and see an imperative to be able to compete in the marketplace, McLuckie notes. As containers enable the rapid release of software, McLuckie adds, Theyre getting more out of engineering teams, so they can focus on core business and less time on infrastructure.

In two years, Heptio has built a family of open-source tools that helps companies simplify, deploy and manage containers running on their IT infrastructure, either on premises or in the cloud. Enterprises can purchase products and support through a Heptio Kubernetes subscription, as well as training and in-field services.

Fueled by $33.5 million in venture capital, Heptio boasts a client roster that includes Microsoft, Under Armour and Netskope.