The team at OpenOcean couldn’t be more excited to announce our latest investment in Strong Network having led the €5.1m seed round alongside Wingman.
One of the major trends in recent years has been the emergence of DevOps and its association with the cloud. However, one thing that has remained firmly on the workstation has been the code.
There are reasons for this. Ask any developer about their experience with traditional virtualisation products and they’ll likely give you a pretty grim review.
In recent years, with the increasing capabilities of web browsers and the maturity of containers there has been a rumbling of innovation which is set to change the way we code and collaborate.
When I first met Laurent I’m pretty sure we didn’t even go through his pitch. We were on the same page and I think I said “I know, right!?” far too many times. It is magic when you meet someone building the exact product you were desperate to find.
Strong Network is solving two major issues in software development: security and productivity
Security: It is common knowledge that the amount of data breaches is skyrocketing. However, it is less appreciated that source code breaches are increasing. Source code is the most valuable IP for many companies and to lose it is absolutely catastrophic. In just the past months we have seen yet more high profile cases with Microsoft and Samsung having source code stolen by Lapsus$ hackers. Around the same time, Nvidia’s DLSS source was also leaked. These are major technology companies with large security budgets. Imagine the challenges for the rest of us.
Productivity: “Well it works on my machine” – this is a well-known phrase for a software engineer. It can be interpreted more broadly to capture much of the friction that comes when building products in collaboration. Also, with rapidly scaling teams and remote working, spending a few days to get laptops out and set up for team members and then a few weeks to get those team members delivering code is no longer sufficient. Even when set up, there are continuing challenges around process governance, exacerbated by distributed teams. When coding is performed in a virtual environment then our ability to manage collaboration and improve transparency increases tremendously
Strong Network is a team uniquely composed of security and infrastructure experts.
Combining a mixture of Zero Trust design principles as well as the latest innovation in browser and virtualisation technology, Strong Network is helping to secure source code, data and credentials whilst also enhancing developer productivity. By keeping source code in the cloud and building an amazing browser-based developer experience you can realise a world where you can grab an inexpensive Chromebook, get a URL, and start coding securely.
It is common to associate increasing security with deteriorated productivity. Strong Network proves that a well designed and constructed product can actually provide security and agility. In particular, developers keep all their original “root” privileges when working in the cloud, with the added freedom of exercising them on any device, anywhere. It does not get better than that.
Strong Network is a team uniquely composed of security and infrastructure experts with close ties to EPFL with the capabilities to build this much needed next-generation developer platform. Led by Laurent and Ozrenko, two founders that you can’t help but feel upbeat and energetic around, I’m convinced that they are on a path to revolutionise how we build software.
P.S. It is worth mentioning the team eats its own cooking. Strong Network is built on Strong Network!
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