VictorOps Raises $6.5M For A Twitter-Like DevOps Tool To Monitor The Always-On Cloud

VictorOps has raised $6.5 million for its platform that adds a bit of the Twitter lifestyle for the DevOps pro, that person who fills a role somewhere between the IT and developer world. The Series A financing was led by Costanoa Venture Capital with participation from Foundry Group, the lead investor in the company’s 2012 seed round.

The company offers a real-time stream from a company’s enterprise monitoring system through iOS and Android mobile apps, as well as over the web. The apps are designed to keep people updated about enterprise operations with alerts, be they notifications within the app, SMS or email.

Todd Vernon, co-founder and CEO of VictorOps, said DevOps pros have their own special needs with better access to information and more universal access so people can collaborate wherever they are. He uses a term called “cycle stealing,” which I find a bit discomforting, but I see his point. He says that DevOps people have become accustomed to either being on-call or not on at all. People stay close to home when on-call but disappear when it is not their time to work. VictorOps takes a cue from services that are always on. People check their Twitter and Facebook feeds constantly, but they don’t have to necessarily be engaged. With VictorOps, the same principles apply.

Vernon said in an email that Twitter steals cycles from your brain due to their ease of use. People are more aware of things around them in a disproportionate way to the time it takes to find the information. VictorOps follows the same principles so that everyone on the team can participate by this process of cycle stealing. Everyone can have an eye on the infrastructure, but not feel like it’s their responsibility. The on-call team member is still responsible, but if everyone has an idea of what is happening, the likelihood of someone knowing the answer is revealed sooner. The flip side: Everyone is working all the time, always connected to the workplace no matter where they are.

But that’s just the reality of today’s work world. I am always connected, looking at the feed. VictorOps may be convenient but it is indeed stealing brain cycles. Except in the case of VictorOps, the people are your cohorts.

This is a useful tool with a ready market largely untapped. There are tools from companies like PagerDuty and providers like Rackspace and Amazon Web Services have apps for monitoring. But VictorOps is pretty narrowly defined in a market that is booming with the advent of the cloud and the need to balance developer and IT operations mandates.