Lightlytics, a platform for deploying and running cloud configurations, raises $26M

Lightlytics, a platform that enables developer operations (devops) teams to deploy cloud configuration changes at speed without worrying that they’ll break things, has raised $26 million in a series A round of funding.

With cloud infrastructure spending going through the roof, companies are eager to access the flexibility and scalability promised by remote computing system resources. But as a company grows, so does the complexity of their cloud footprint — and this can stretch an already-stretched IT team.

“Any cloud-related task becomes more complex because each configuration is tied to, and dependent on, various others,” Lightlytics CEO Or Shoshani told VentureBeat. “Creating, modifying or deleting resources in cloud environments becomes difficult because of these dependencies.”

The more dependencies that exist in a company’s infrastructure, the more potential there is for something to go wrong when they make a change — and the more resources they will ultimately consume setting out to remedy the situation.

Typically, companies will try to address this complexity through manual, cobbled-together processes, which are not just resource-intensive but hugely error-prone. “Each change affects the cloud posture and the applications on top of it in various ways, which can include availability, security, and cost,” Shoshani said.

And this is where Lightlytics enters the fray, by helping companies understand their existing cloud state, and the impact of any changes that they plan to make.

Digital twin

Companies deploy Lightlytics directly into their cloud environment, and it can be integrated with CI/CD pipelines spanning the likes of GitHub or Jenkins — this helps Lightlytics serve up predictions for any prospective code change.

“With our platform, we hold the customer’s cloud state in real-time by ingesting all of their cloud configuration events,” Shoshani explained. “Even if changes are not made through CI/CD, we see them and provide impact post-deployment.”

In effect, Lightlytics generates something akin to a “digital twin” of a company’s production environment, and then simulates all the potential configuration changes including their likely impact.

There is other tooling that is tangentially similar, often centered around what is known as “static code analysis,” which is a debugging mechanism that involves examining source code before a program is run and comparing it to preset rules. Snyk, for example, can inspect for the security implications of any code changes that are made, while the likes of InfraCost can check for the cloud cost impact.

But Lightlytics touts itself as one of the few companies that brings a full impact analysis to the mix, spanning security, cost, and availability. And in the future, it plans to extend this to performance, capacity, and high-availability.

“Unlike static code analysis, which is conducted at the resource level, we enable devops teams to accurately see how their cloud will behave before deployment,” Shoshani said.

Bigger the better

Founded out of Israel in 2020, Lightlytics has attracted a number of notable customers in its short lifespan so far, including automated accounts payable company Tipalti, and publicly-traded video cloud company Kaltura. In truth, companies of just about any size are in Lightlytics’ target market — the bigger their cloud footprint, the better.

“Our customers and target customers include startups that have reached scale, and large enterprises,” Shoshani added. “Once the customer’s cloud reaches a certain scale, operating it with velocity and confidence becomes challenging for any team.”

Prior to now, Lightlytics had raised $4 million in seed funding, and with another $26 million in the bank, the Tel Aviv, Israel-based company said that it plans to triple its headcount in 2022, open an office in the U.S., and continue scaling its platform.

Lightlytics’ series A round was led by Energy Impact Partners, with participation from Cervin Ventures, TLV Partners VC, and Glilot Capital Partners VC.