Sentry, which provides a software platform used by 3.5 million developers to fix malfunctions in their applications, today announced that it has closed a $90 million funding round.

The round values Sentry, officially Functional Software Inc., at $3 billion. BOND and Accel were the lead investors.

Fixing a malfunction in an application involves multiple steps. Developers have to detect the malfunction, determine which component of their application is causing the issue and, within the affected component, find the specific snippets of code responsible for the error. Sentry has developed a platform that streamlines all three tasks.

One of Sentry’s key selling points is that it supports more than 100 programming languages. As a result, a company with dozens of applications written in different languages could theoretically use Sentry to monitor all its workloads. Using a single tool is more convenient than deploying multiple monitoring products.

In the past, companies would update an application with new features every few weeks or months. Today, it’s common practice in the enterprise to release software updates multiple times a day. This approach provides several benefits for development teams but also complicates troubleshooting. When a large number of software updates are released every week, it’s more difficult to identify the specific update that led to an application malfunction.

Sentry’s platform provides suggestions on which code update is most likely to have caused an error. The platform organizes the errors that it detects in a centralized interface and aggregates relevant technical details about each incident. Sentry can, for example, highlight notable events that occurred before an application malfunction to help developers more easily determine the root cause.

Sentry uses an approach known as distributed tracing to spot which application component is responsible for a malfunction.

Enterprise workloads often comprise a large number of modules. Distributed tracing involves sending a piece of data to an application and tracking how the data travels between the application’s modules while it’s being processed. If one of the components being tested generates an error, developers can prioritize it as part of their troubleshooting efforts. 

More than 3.5 million developers at 85,000 organizations worldwide use Sentry’s platform. The startup’s installed base includes major enterprise technology companies such as VMware Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Atlassian Corporation Plc. Walt Disney Co. is another customer.

Sentry detailed today on occasion of its funding announcement that the number of customers using its platform grew 240% in the past year. Sentry now helps developers process more than 790 billion application data points per month.

“Our singular focus on developers, combined with the depth of our platform across 100-plus languages, allows us to uniquely solve developer problems for every customer and software environment,” said Sentry Chief Executive Officer Milin Desai. “Revenue has more than tripled in just over two years, and our team will continue to be laser-focused on providing engineering organizations with the ability to ship better code faster.”

Sentry will use the new funding to grow its presence in international markets, as well as expand its product development and customer acquisition teams. The startup has grown its headcount by 75% over the year leading up to the funding round.

“The rate at which businesses are moving towards a digital-first mindset is unprecedented,” said BOND General Partner Jay Simons. “In order to sustain applications, programs, and mobile, the proper infrastructure needs to be in place to manage and monitor the health of every customer solution.”

Startups helping enterprises fix malfunctions in their information technology environments have raised significant amounts of funding over the last few months. BigPanda Inc., which is using machine learning to ease troubleshooting tasks, raised $190 million in January. LogDNA Inc. earlier secured $50 million funding for its IT log management and analysis platform. 

Image: Sentry