Israeli startup Codefresh Inc. is hoping to shake up the DevOps landscape after closing on an $8 million round of funding led by Microsoft Corp.’s new venture capital arm, M12.

The Series B round, which also saw previous investors Hillsven Capital, Viola Ventures and the CEIF fund participate, brings Codefresh’s total funding to $15.1 million.

Codefresh sells continuous integration and continuous development or CI/CD software that helps facilitate the rapid and automated deployment of software applications to Kubernetes, which is a popular technology used to manage containerized apps. Software containers are an up-and-coming development method that allows developers to build and run distributed apps on any platform without the need for a virtual machine or computer emulated in software.

Codefresh makes some big claims about its software, saying it can execute the deployment of Kubernetes apps in as little as 10 minutes. Furthermore, it reckons that teams using its software can speed up development by 24 times. Although that number might be a tad optimistic, the whole point of CI/CD is indeed to speed up application development.

The fact that Microsoft is investing in Codefresh signals that the company is a big believer in the growing importance of Kubernetes-managed software containers and their likely penetration in the enterprise. Microsoft is keen to play a much bigger role in cloud software development, and is hoping that much of that work will eventually take place on its Azure cloud, something that was made clear by its recent acquisition of the developer platform GitHub.

“We decided to invest in Codefresh because of the company’s unique solutions that enable organizations to successfully adopt Kubernetes,” Mony Hassid, general manager and managing director of EMEA at M12, said in a statement.

Microsoft’s M12 fund was set up only this year as a successor to its original Microsoft Ventures investment arm. At the time of its launch, M12 said it was interested in funding Series A to Series C rounds in promising startups involved in software development, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cybersecurity, drones and 3-D printing, among other technologies.

Microsoft’s interest in Codefresh underlines the fact that CI/CD remains one of the key challenges for companies building next-generation software applications, said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc.

“Add Kubernetes into the mix and it’s clear that things are not getting easier,” Mueller said. “The good news is there are lots of new ideas and startups in the field. This investment makes sense as long as Codefresh can change the equation on CI/CD and DevOps. Developer and team centricity is a good start for anyone wanting to be successful in this field, as developers want to build code instead of doing code management.”

Codefresh launched its platform in 2017 and already boasts about 20,000 users. The company has also partnered with Microsoft’s rivals Google LLC and Amazon Web Services Inc. to offer continuous integration capabilities on their respective cloud platforms.

Image: Codefresh/Facebook