A cause for celebration: Reaching $100M in ARR and welcoming our first president

January 27, 2022 By Wayne Jackson

3 minute read time

Heading into the new year, I had the opportunity to reflect on the journey Sonatype has been on for over a decade, and how the industry has changed since we first invented componentized software development and then software supply chain management.

Notably, over the past year, the market recognized the importance of software supply chain management — and saw the need to solve the really hard problem of how engineering teams can balance speed, quality, intelligence, and security at scale. This is exactly what Sonatype has focused on since its founding.

While things are changing, and often for the better, what hasn't changed is our dedication to the community and our customers. And, empowering you with the intelligence needed to create innovative software without the trade-off of quality or security. We're on a mission to make the lives of developers, and every member of an engineering team, easier.

I'm excited to share that our dedication to this cause has enabled us to surpass $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). One of many milestones we're incredibly proud of reaching in 2021. Others include:

Throughout my career, I've been lucky enough to celebrate a myriad of different milestones. But, being able to share all of this with you is special. We know we wouldn't be here today without the support and partnership of the 15 million developers who are part of our community and interact with Sonatype in various ways.

Welcoming Alex Berry: Sonatype's new president

Another cause for celebration is the appointment of Alex Berry to serve as Sonatype's first president.

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Berry is an award-winning executive with more than 20 years of experience transforming and growing global businesses, taking organizations from $30 million to over $1.3 billion. And, as we continue to expand our cloud offerings, his remarkable history of operational excellence across all SaaS business functions at companies like Vector Solutions, Syniti, and Neustar will be an unrivaled asset.

As the world takes notice of our mission to empower every engineer with information to solve these hard problems, adding Alex to the team was the logical next step in our evolution. His experience with high-growth companies and history of building cloud organizations made him the perfect fit to elevate Sonatype even further. Welcome to the team, Alex!

Empowering developers with intelligence to scale security, quality, and innovation  

At the end of the day, Sonatype is doing what we're doing to help companies innovate better by enabling them to make really exceptional, safe, software at scale.

To succeed, developers must become talented generalists — talented creators of first-party code, but also security-minded collectors and curators of third-party components. Developers urgently need full insight into the make up and secure status of packages to make the best choices. They need to avoid taking actions that may introduce risk into complex software supply chains which could later negatively impact customers, partners, and their own organization.

We want to empower the developer and security communities to work more collaboratively and embrace the power of open innovation. To do this, we're constantly evolving our products to meet the needs of growing engineering teams and pushing the boundaries of what's possible. It's how we were the first company with a firewall that stops open source vulnerabilities from entering a developer's ecosystem and the first company to detect counterfeit and malicious code injections into open source software supply chains.

While we're taking a second to celebrate an incredible milestone — and welcome Alex to the team — we're getting right back to work. I look forward to even more milestone celebrations as we continue working towards transforming how the world innovates through intelligent software development.

We can't wait to show you what's next.

Tags: featured, News and Views, Corporate Momentum

Written by Wayne Jackson

Wayne is the CEO of Sonatype, a role he has held since 2010. Prior to Sonatype, Wayne served as the CEO of open source network security pioneer Sourcefire, Inc. (NASDAQ:FIRE), which he guided from fledgling start-up through an IPO in March of 2007, later acquired by Cisco for $2.7 billion. Before Sourcefire, Wayne co-founded Riverbed Technologies, a wireless infrastructure company, and served as its CEO until the sale of the company for more than $1 billion in March of 2000.