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Copado, a provider of a DevOps platform for building applications that extend software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications from Salesforce, this week announced it has added value stream management capabilities.
Andrew Leigh, chief marketing officer for Copado, said providing a platform that accelerates the development and deployment of application code is no longer sufficient. The winter 2021 release of the Copado DevOps 360 platform now includes value stream management capabilities that enable organizations to better prioritize DevOps projects, he said.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic more organizations than ever are now relying more on SaaS applications that can be accessed easily by employees working from home. IT organizations are also now using platforms such as Salesforce to jumpstart digital business transformation initiatives. Rather than write develop entire applications from the ground up, many organizations are employing low-code tools from Salesforce and others to extend, for example, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.
Leigh said most of the activity revolves around professional developers who are increasingly applying best DevOps practices to build those applications. Copado has certified more than 25,000 developers on its platform, he said.
Given the current state of the economy, Leigh said interest in DevOps platforms is rising among organizations building Salesforce applications because they want to ensure a return on investment (ROI). Organizations that are investing six figures to build these applications are especially interested in value stream management tools that help make sure these projects are delivered on time.
The value stream management capabilities added by Copado include support for the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) for building complex applications more efficiently. It also provides the ability to synchronize stories from Jira and Agile Planning boards.
The latest version of the Copado DevOps 360 platform also adds a suite of declarative pipeline builders that allow non-technical teams to define and manage value pipelines without a single line of code. That capability is intended to simplify version control and automation flows to enable developers and administrators who manage Salesforce instances to better align their efforts.
Copado added deeper integrations to third-party testing tools that incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) and updated its static code analysis and compliance tools.
Salesforce is clearly not the only SaaS application platform that organizations are looking to extend, but it is among the fastest-growing. For its most recent third quarter, the company posted revenues of $5.42 billion, an increase of 20% year over year. The company is now lifting its future guidance to slightly exceed pre-pandemic levels. Salesforce is projecting fiscal 2021 revenue at the end of its fourth quarter will total $21.11 billion. Revenue guidance for fiscal 2022 has been raised to $25.5 billion. Salesforce earlier this week also announced its intention to acquire Slack, a provider of a messaging platform that is used widely by DevOps teams.
Leigh said a dedicated DevOps platform for Salesforce applications is necessary because Salesforce applications are constructed using a set of objects and tables unique to the platform versus traditional application code. Regardless of the reason for requiring a dedicated DevOps platform, interest in building and deploying custom applications on top of the Salesforce platform has increased sharply since the start of the pandemic.
