We’re just a few weeks into the New Year, and I’m already extremely excited for what’s to come in 2014. Software development is becoming a critical core competency at Enterprise IT, Web and embedded systems companies around the world, and Continuous Delivery and DevOps initiatives are underway. A recent Forrester Research survey of Fortune 1000 companies indicates that 58 of IT leaders in their companies place faster delivery of IT services in their top 3 priorities. Yet, only 12 can deliver high quality results fast enough . This bodes well for CloudBees since accelerating software delivery is what we’ve been all about since our company’s inception. What an exciting time to be in the industry!
As we head into 2014, I want to first take a moment to reflect on the milestones our team has accomplished this past year. We had strong growth and record bookings, closing 2013 with outstanding momentum. It was a year of significant transformation and achievement for CloudBees. We hired 51 new team members, including four new senior executives. We significantly grew our sales and marketing team and added proven, world-class professionals.
We held our most successful user conference ever in SPARK 2013 , where we unveiled our new Continuous Delivery strategic positioning and announced our Thought Leadership Network . Industry thought leaders, including Jez Humble , Gene Kim , and Gary Gruver have teamed up with us to help businesses successfully adopt continuous delivery practices across both embedded and web/IT market segments. Long time CloudBees customers including Paul Rogers, Chief Development Officer at GE Software , spoke at length about their organizational transformations toward Continuous Delivery and the important role that CloudBees continues to play in that transformation.
On the product front, we established a new User Experience function, achieved a Net Promoter Score of over 50, and made significant progress on our Software Delivery vision with a number of new and exciting products slated for release in early 2014.
To top it off, we welcomed a host of new customers in the energy, gaming, big data, and space exploration industries including Shell Oil, EPIC Games, Splunk, andSpaceX!
I am excited about the future of software development, and am enthused to be part of a world-class organization. We have some exciting software offerings slated for this year, and I invite you to take part in our community to stay connected as we journey into 2014.
Stay connected with us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ElectricCloudInc
and Twitter: @ElectricCloud