With technology’s ongoing expansion into the cloud and the edge, even as applications themselves grow in complexity, the needs of organizations that rely on software to power their businesses evolve and grow as well.
As we’ve been reporting in SD Times all year, security and governance are two areas in which a lot of time and money are being invested, and developers are increasingly asked to take on a larger role in the development life cycle.
This year’s list of companies to watch reflect those changes in the industry, as startups find gaps to fill and established companies pivot to areas of greater need.
Here’s the list of companies to keep an eye on in 2022.
WHAT THEY DO: API security
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: APIsec provides a fully automated API security testing platform, giving DevOps and Security teams continuous visibility and complete coverage for APIs. APIsec automates API testing, provides complete coverage of every endpoint and attack vector, and enables continuous visibility.
WHAT THEY DO: Observability data collection and routing
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Cribl’s LogStream delivers a flexible solution to enable customers to choose what data they want to keep, in what format, in which data store – and the assurance that they can also choose to delay any or all of those decisions with a complete copy in very low cost storage.
WHAT THEY DO: Testing
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: With its mantra of “Don’t trap business logic in a testing tool,” Curiosity offers an open testing platform, and is creating a “traceability lab” that links technologies across the whole SDLC. If something changes in one place, the impact of this change should be identified across requirements, tests, data, and beyond.
WHAT THEY DO: Kubernetes troubleshooting
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: After raising $25 million, the company is positioning its platform as the single source of truth for understanding Kubernetes applications, whereas extant observability solutions tend to take an ops-centric view of things.
WHAT THEY DO: DevOps observability
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: With a new beginning under the ServiceNow umbrella (it acquired Lightstep earlier this year), the company’s ex-Googlers built Change Intelligence software to enable any developer, operator or SRE to understand changes in their services’ health and what caused those changes. This, the company says, will deliver on the promise of AIOps — to automate the process of investigation changes within complex systems.
WHAT THEY DO: Automated end-to-end testing
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Mabl is a low-code, intelligent test automation platform. Agile teams use mabl’s SaaS platform for automated end-to-end testing that integrates directly into the entire development life cycle. Its low-code UI makes it easy to create, execute, and maintain software tests. The company’s native auto-heal capability evolves tests with your changing UI, and comprehensive test results help users quickly resolve bugs before they reach production.
WHAT THEY DO: Intelligent event data platform
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Winners of 12 industry awards in 12 months, the company’s 6.7 release of its Diffusion platform raises the bar for messaging and event brokers.
WHAT THEY DO: Autonomous DevSecOps
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: With $30 million in September Series A funding in its coffers, Rezilion will build out its Validate vulnerability platform based on the company’s Trust in Motion philosophy, and the company expects to add new solutions that help autonomously mitigate risk, patch detected vulnerabilities and dynamically manage attack surfaces.
WHAT THEY DO: Live debugging
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: The company this year launched its X-Ray Vision feature for debugging third-party code and of Agile Flame Graphs to profile distributed applications in production, its integration with Open Tracing, and its introduction of Live Logger. And, CTO Liran Haimovitch’s podcast “The Production-First Mindset” is wildly popular.
WHAT THEY DO: Application security and ransomware protection
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Spin Technology was highlighted as a Top 5 Online SaaS Backup Solutions for the Microsoft Office 365 ecosystem by the Data Center Infrastructure Group. Spin uses of Artificial Intelligence to improve threat intelligence, prevention, prediction, and protection. It can also enable faster ransomware attack detection and response, as well as automate in backup and recovery, while reducing the need for human cybersecurity experts and leading to time and effort savings for enterprise organizations.
WHAT THEY DO: Code security
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Spectral’s platform helps developers ensure their code is secure by integrating with CI tools, by enabling their pre-commit tool to automate early issue detection, and by scanning during static builds with plugins for JAMStack, Webpack, Gatsby, Netlify and more.
WHAT THEY DO: Code documentation
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Onboarding, outdated documentation and project switching all slow developers down. By syncing documentation with code, Swimm enables developers to get up to speed more quickly on the projects they’re assigned to.
WHAT THEY DO: No-code platform
WHY WE’RE WATCHING: Enterprise-grade no-code application platforms such as Unqork have radically expanded the scope and capabilities of no-code. These platforms empower large organizations to rapidly develop and effectively manage sophisticated, scalable solutions without writing a single line of code. Unqork late last year raised $207 million in funding, bringing the company’s valuation to $2 billion.
