Platform.sh intends to continue its momentum. With a workforce of 300 employees, including 150 in R&D, this French cloud platform has exceeded 50 million euros in recurring annual turnover. Historically positioned in the deployment of websites by supporting multiple CMS (Magento, WordPress, Drupal, Typo3, eZ Platform, Strapi…), the company is officially launching on April 3 a variation of its offer, called Upsun, aimed to address the world of SaaS applications. Described by Platform.sh as the most important launch since its creation, Upsun is the result of a year and a half of development for the Parisian publisher. The solution has been in beta with 350 users for several months. Its number 1 target: start-ups and scale-ups.
This brand new cloud incorporates the fundamentals of Platform.sh. A cloud whose strong point has remained the same since its beginnings: being able to create on the fly, thanks to a base of software containers, pre-production environments identical to the deployed application stack, down to the byte. Via this cloning mechanism, it is possible to launch as many development projects as necessary in parallel, with their test and acceptance stack, while having the guarantee of a strictly identical result when put online. If necessary, the environment allows you to revert to the previous version at any time. Python, PHP, Java, Go, Ruby, Rust, .Net, Golang… Platform.sh supports some of the most used programming languages. The same goes for frameworks, with support for Symfony, Laravel, Spring, Node.js, React or Angular.
The target: digital product
With Upsun, Platform.sh intends to primarily target developers and more particularly digital products. “Alongside the use of content-oriented CMS and transaction-oriented e-commerce systems, more and more companies are launching into the publishing of digital products in SaaS mode. It is in this area that actors spend the most time coding. Hence our desire to target this market”, comments Frédéric Plais, CEO and co-founder of Platform.sh. From there, the company adapted its PaaS to meet the need to develop in micro-services mode. “Thanks to Upsun, product teams can focus 100% on creating new features and improving their business, rather than spending considerable time managing cloud infrastructures,” insists Frédéric Plais.
“The objective is to respond to the problem of SaaS publishers who deploy step by step”
The platform is suitable for decoupled architectures, headless projects and applications rich in data or artificial intelligence. Unlike the historical PaaS of Platform.sh which is based on bundle logic, Upsun offers pricing based on the machine capacity consumed. “The objective is to respond to the problems of SaaS publishers in terms of economic model by offering a transparent and flexible pricing logic. This approach allows start-ups to only pay for what they use and to develop step by step. step while managing their budgets more effectively”, praises Frédéric Plais.
A revisited onboarding
With Upsun, Platform.sh has completely revised onboarding compared to its historical PaaS. By integrating Upsun, users join their assigned project teams within their company. Another development: a completely revisited YAML structure. “We previously had three YAMLs to describe the network, the infrastructure and the databases respectively. Now we have merged them into one. The objective being to simplify handling”, comments Frédéric Plais. “From the start, we offer a pre-built YAML file based on the client’s project and the best practices we have gleaned throughout the projects.” At the same time, Upsun supports vertical and horizontal auto-sizing on all containers, with control points on all floors. A scaling of great finesse that Platform.sh did not offer until now.
“We believe that Upsun could become an activity as important as our historical offering,” confides Frédéric Plais. A prospect which potentially could allow Platform.sh to reach 100 million euros in ARR, and to rise to de facto unicorn status. To boost the marketing of its new offering, the company is offering a 50% price reduction over the first year of contracting to any organization adopting its solution before June, with the key being a credit that can reach a ceiling of $100,000.
“Upsun quadruples our addressable market. We estimate that the SaaS application hosting market represents $30 billion,” explains Frédéric Plais. “In front of us, we certainly have the hyperscalers. But unlike the latter, we offer a fully integrated workflow, and not a multitude of services to be combined and administered by hand.”
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