Xtype.IO Ltd., the creator of a DevOps platform that accelerates the development of low-code applications built with ServiceNow, said today that it has raised $5.8 million in a seed funding round.
The investment was led by Columbia Capital with participation from Loop Capital and SaaS Ventures. Xtype said it will use the funds from today’s round to accelerate its product roadmap, grow its development team and increase its presence in the US market.
ServiceNow Inc.’s low-code application development platform. is popular for its simplicity, which allows companies to build robust and secure business apps quickly using a graphical interface, with minimal coding required. However, while the platform makes software development easy, xtype says users can benefit from implementing DevOps practices to update those apps faster and more frequently.
DevOps refers to a set of practices that combine software development and information technology operations. The goal is to shorten software development lifecycles and provide continuous delivery with high quality. This is a philosophy widely adopted by application developers.
According to xtype founder and Chief Executive Ron Gidron, ServiceNow is one of the most popular low-code development platforms. But it lacks the agility of modern DevOps processes, meaning it can take weeks or months to deploy updates to apps built using the platform.
Furthermore, he said that errors are so common that they often result in applications going offline. “Manual deployment processes create inefficiencies, delay releases and lead to costly errors,” says Gidron. “It is common practice for releases to be scheduled and performed during off-hours in anticipation of downtime.”
With xtype’s development and release automation platform, low-code application developers have a way to implement new features and functionality in ServiceNow faster than ever before, the company said. Its main goal is to boost the productivity of citizen app developers and reduce the number of errors that appear when introducing new updates.
It does that by combining modern DevOps practices with advanced automation and synchronization. With xtype, new application releases are fully automated and deployed in one click, similar to the “continuous integration/continuous delivery” approach used by modern application developers.
While its primary focus is pushing individual application updates faster, the Xtype platform also provides real-time command and control of the user’s entire ServiceNow ecosystem. This way, it can also prevent unwanted changes from being included in a new release, with full transparency on what apps have been updated, where and when, and by whom.
Gidron says xtype is really about helping low-code developers get the most out of the ServiceNow platform. He said that by moving from manual release processes to a fully automated CI/CD pipeline, users can push new updates multiple times a day if they want, as opposed to once every few weeks.
“We see this creating a positive feedback loop for our users, with far-reaching effects on everything from reducing integration conflicts and cutting deployment times to increasing development quality and strengthening employee satisfaction,” Gidron said.
Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. said. at SiliconANGLE that xtype’s funding shows how ServiceNow is transitioning from being a platform to being an entire ecosystem. “When startups like xtype get funding to run DevOps for ServiceNow to deliver and manage low-code and no-code artifacts, it presents a very interesting opportunity and we’ll see if how will it develop,” he added.
Columbia Capital Partner Jason Booma said he invested in xtype because he believes businesses will collectively develop “hundreds of millions” of business applications to support their digital transformation efforts. Platforms like ServiceNow will play an important role in this development, he added.
“Xtype provides tremendous value by meeting businesses where they are and dramatically improving their ability to build digital tools and products on their platform of choice,” said Booma.