DEVOPSdigest

Datical announced $8 million in Series B funding, led by S3 Ventures with participation from existing investors Mercury Fund and Austin Ventures.

The company will use funding to expand its platform, which provides the automation necessary for enterprises to keep up with the increasing speed of application rollouts.

In addition to growing its product development team, Datical will continue to ramp up global sales, marketing and support resources and activities.

Datical DB automates database change management in application release cycles, which are becoming more frequent as organizations shift toward continuous delivery models and DevOps methods to meet demands from the digital enterprise. Automation at every level is a critical element of DevOps, but the database is often overlooked or becomes an afterthought when companies adopt this modern approach to software delivery.

“Whether our customers are using cloud or on-premise databases, we enable them to increase the speed, accuracy and security of database change,” said Derek Hutson, CEO of Datical. “As the market turns to Datical to solve this problem, partnering with S3 enables even greater investment in our technology and provides our current and future customers with ever-increasing value.”

Since it was founded in 2012, Datical’s business has been growing steadily (300% in 2015) as it provides critical software to developers and database administrators at the likes of Fidelity Investments, GE Transportation, eBay Enterprise, Deloitte and the State of North Dakota.

“The role of the DBA has always been as the protector of the database. However, accelerated speed and constant change are the new reality, as organizations adopt DevOps and continuous delivery practices to remain competitive,” said Julie Craig, Research Director at Enterprise Management Associates. “The ‘do not change’ paradigm that has surrounded databases since the 80s is now creating a bottleneck that is not compatible with organizational mandates to accelerate the speed of software delivery.”

“Datical rounds out the continuous delivery automation story with an integrated approach to the packaging, validation and deployment of database changes,” Craig continued. “‘Out of the box’ integrations with popular code repository, version control and release management solutions round out that story.”

“As enterprises continue to adopt DevOps as the ideal approach for application delivery, we recognize the database is quickly becoming the next area of focus for automation in IT,” said Brian R. Smith, Managing Director at S3 Ventures. “Datical’s combination of a leadership position in a growing market, innovative technology and an experienced team make this a natural fit for S3.”

By adding S3 Ventures to its bench of investors, Datical gains a strategic advisor that has a history of successful enterprise technology investments and exits, including Gravitant (now part of IBM), Alkami Technology and Pivot3.