InfluxData 2019 Year in Review

By Evan Kaplan / Company
Jan 10, 2020

2019 was a great year for InfluxData. But before I get into the details, I need to emphasize that none of this was possible without the incredible open source community around InfluxDB, the customers that rely on our products, and the investors that believe in our team. In the past year, we surpassed 700 paying customers, raised Series D funding, launched operations in Europe and transitioned to a cloud-first company with the release of the most significant evolution of the product since it launched in 2014. We’re proud of all that we’ve accomplished and humbled by the support we’ve received along the way. And so, as we embark on a new year and new decade, I’d like to acknowledge some of the biggest achievements and events of 2019.

Explosive community growth

The InfluxDB community continued to thrive last year as we saw InfluxDB usage grow by more than 60%, with nearly 350,000 daily active instances. We are and always have been a developer-focused company, so we amplified overall engagement efforts on several fronts:

• Introducing the InfluxAces program to recognize and support leaders in the InfluxDB community. The team of Aces are out there speaking at conferences, hosting meetups and engaging developers to share their InfluxDB expertise and passion
• Organizing 25 time series meetups around the world — from Boston to Bangalore and Minneapolis to Paris
• Hosting three successful InfluxDays conferences in San Francisco, London and New York; learning interesting InfluxDB use cases from Robinhood, the U.S. Army, Wayfair, Optum Health and many more

InfluxDB Cloud 2.0

While we released many product updates throughout the year, the big news and main focus for the company was the launch of InfluxDB Cloud 2.0. This was a bet-the-company initiative that was 18 months in the making and represents a critical dimension of the future of time series technology. InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 is a powerful, elastically scalable platform for time-sensitive workloads. It’s the industry’s first serverless time series technology and marks the evolution of InfluxDB to a database as a service — bringing storage, UI and visualization, processing, monitoring, and alerting into a common API-driven platform. It’s highly customizable to allow developers and operators the flexibility they need for modern application development. It features advanced analytics with the power of Flux, transparent usage-based pricing and a free tier. The launch represents major R&D progress, but we’re really just getting started.

As part of our new emphasis on cloud, we announced a major new partnership with Google Cloud to make InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 available as a native offering on GCP. This was part of a larger Google initiative to support best-in-class open source software and make it available to its customers. InfluxDB Cloud will be available as the only time series platform on GCP later this quarter.

Expanding enterprise customer base

We also saw impressive growth in our enterprise user base over 2019, surpassing 700 customers. InfluxDB is empowering customers to maximize the value of their time-sensitive workloads by providing radical efficiency and real-time observability. New customers include Visa, Lego, Electronic Arts, and McLaren Automotive. Airbus Helicopters is using InfluxDB in R&D — collecting and analyzing sensor data collected during flight testing to improve the performance of its commercial aircraft — and NASA is using InfluxDB to optimize performance and prevent downtime of launch vehicles — collecting vehicle performance insights at 500ms intervals and analyzing them in real-time.

Company expansion & employee growth

As a company based on open source technology, InfluxData has always spanned international borders, but 2019 was the year that we really took things global. Last year, the team grew by nearly 60%, with a majority in technical roles and working remotely outside of our San Francisco HQ. To support this expanding workforce and increased demand for our products, we opened InfluxData offices in Austin and London. These operational expansion efforts were fueled by a $60 million Series D funding secured at the beginning of the year led by Norwest Venture Partners and joined by Sorenson Capital along with existing investors Sapphire Ventures, Battery Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Trinity Ventures and Harmony Partners. Their continued support emphasizes their confidence in the technology we’re building and the market category we’re defining.

Recognition

In the fast-paced world of software, innovation is key to success and a talented team is essential for that. Last year, InfluxData was named as one of Fast Company’s 50 Best Workplaces for Innovators. I believe that culture beats strategy every time, so it’s always been a focus for the company. We work hard to create a culture where employees feel encouraged and allowed to try new things, fail and try again. It’s an honor to be recognized among such other highly regarded organizations.

2020 is shaping up to be another great year for InfluxData. As time series continues to outpace every other database category in popularity, we’re focused on making it easier for developers to leverage the most powerful time series platform across even more use cases. We plan to keep growing our product offerings and our geographic footprint while maintaining our commitment to greater innovation and faster time to awesome. We hope you will continue with us on this incredible journey in the new year.