Users Eye Enhanced Capabilities with LaunchDarkly’s Houseware Acquisition
LaunchDarkly clientele are set to explore renewed prospects in application development and strategic business alignment through a novel data warehouse solution introduced on the back end.
Software experimenters will soon have the option to integrate and store their backend data within an existing data warehouse system, brought into play by LaunchDarkly’s recent acquisition.
LaunchDarkly’s platform is renowned for feature management, a crucial practice that decouples the release of software capabilities into production from the exposure of those features to active end-user traffic. This process utilizes software toggles known as feature flags. This technique is advocated by DevOps platform vendors, among them Harness and CloudBees, as it minimizes deployment risks by initially rolling out changes to a limited user base before executing a full-scale launch. Additionally, LaunchDarkly offers swift rollback capabilities for features that encounter issues.
As generative AI applications continue to permeate enterprise IT sectors, the experimentation with software—where organizations roll out multiple slightly modified versions of a change to user groups and assess their reactions before a comprehensive deployment—is increasingly capturing attention from LaunchDarkly’s user base, as suggested by the company’s chief executive.
“Our users have expressed enthusiasm for our initiatives in reducing release risks through progressive rollouts,” remarked Dan Rogers, CEO of LaunchDarkly. “However, concerning experiments and AI feature launches, a significant portion of our data already resides in Snowflake. They’ve asked us to focus on integrating with that environment instead of requiring unique metrics, events, and sessions.”
Enter Houseware.io, a San Francisco-based startup that LaunchDarkly has acquired for an undisclosed sum. Houseware gained recognition in 2022 by securing the Snowflake Startup Challenge with its no-code app, crafted using the Snowflake Native App Framework. This application evaluates transactional, performance, and user experience data in relation to product and business aspirations. Now rebranded as Warehouse Native Experimentation, the app is available in private preview for LaunchDarkly customers and utilized internally, according to Rogers.
This new application, accompanied by a partnership with Snowflake, is poised to accelerate feedback on LaunchDarkly experiments via a centralized data store that is already part of many customers’ resource pools. Although specific future partnerships were not disclosed, Rogers hinted at potential integrations with other data warehouse vendors like Databricks.
Previously, connecting IT and business data for software experimentation hadn’t been a prime focus for LaunchDarkly, which leaned towards offering software engineering capabilities. Yet, this narrative is shifting with the recent acquisition.
“LaunchDarkly had facilitated feature delivery and experimentation by user segment. The addition of Houseware.io’s technology broadens awareness of previously overlooked segments,” noted Andrew Cornwall, an analyst. “While LaunchDarkly has been commended for its engineering prowess, Houseware’s incorporation could bolster their aptitude in conducting experiments that convey tangible business outcomes.”
LaunchDarkly’s platform now stands alongside competitors such as the Experimentation Platforms from Spotify, Microsoft’s ExP, Uber’s XP, Netflix, as well as Optimizely and Amplitude platform. With the launch of these advanced capabilities, LaunchDarkly’s stake in the experimental software sector is set to grow even stronger.
