Continuous software delivery startup Harness Inc. said today it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a rival company called Split Software Inc., which specializes in feature flag management and experimentation.

Harness said it intends to integrate Split’s capabilities into its own platform, so its customers will be able to experiment and deploy new features in their software much faster than was possible before.

Harness sells a continuous delivery-as-a-service platform that’s powered by machine learning algorithms. Its software monitors new software releases for any bugs or performance issues, making it easier for teams to understand what’s happening in an application’s baseline environment. Should an app start acting up after a key update, teams can use Harness to initiate a rollback to the previous version, before digging down to identify the cause and fix the issue.

The software enables a methodology known as continuous integration and continuous deployment or CI/CD, which refers to the way companies push out frequent updates to their software, as often as several times a day. CI/CD transforms software development, which traditionally proceeded at a much slower pace, with updates coming only once every few weeks or months.

Harness is considered to be a leader in the software development industry, having recently closed on a bumper $150 million funding round that brought its total amount raised to more than a half-billion dollars. The company aims to make it simple for developer teams to adopt CI/CD workflows, offering numerous prepackaged tools and features that streamline implementation.

As for Split Software, it can be considered as a rival to Harness, but it focuses on a very specialized niche within CI/CD, namely feature flagging and experimentation. Its software is used to push out new updates to applications, iterate on feedback, and recover swiftly from any problems or outages that they might cause. It paves the way for teams to experiment with new features in a way that doesn’t hurt customers’ experiences or application stability.

Harness co-founder and Chief Executive Jyoti Bansal (pictured, center) said the acquisition will add more robust capabilities to his company’s platform, enabling users to accelerate their software delivery efforts. As part of the deal, Split Software’s team will join Harness.

Split CEO Brian Bell said the moment of feature release is a critical touchpoint between developers and end users.

“Our mission at Split has been to give development teams the confidence to accelerate with control and the freedom to innovate with ease,” he said. “To further this mission, I couldn’t think of a better partner than Harness. Harness is automating and integrating every stage of software development. Together, we will have the most comprehensive software delivery platform on the market.”

Once Split’s capabilities are integrated into its own platform, Harness will enable teams to build, deploy and release software while simultaneously running A/B tests, or randomized control experiments, to measure the performance and effectiveness of new features. By providing this functionality, Harness says, it eliminates the need for software teams to buy single-point solutions.

Harness has been busy over the last year, racing to build out its platform’s capabilities and cement its industry-leading position ahead of a possible initial public offering. Last year saw the introduction of AIDA, a developer assistant powered by generative artificial intelligence, and that was followed by the launch of four new CI/CD modules, including a code repository, internal developer portal, infrastructure-as-code management and software supply chain assurance, adding to its eight existing modules.

More recently, Harness debuted an open-source project called Gitness, which is a code-hosting platform that’s positioned as an alternative to GitHub, and acquired a company called Armory Inc. in a deal valued at about $7 million. Armory was focused on automating the continuous deployment side of the CI/CD workflow, simplifying the process of creating scripts that scan new code for vulnerabilities and performance issues before it’s deployed.

Harness declined to say how much it paid to acquire Split Software, but the amount is likely to be considerably more than the $7 million it paid for Armory. That’s because Split has raised more than $110 million in funding, with its most recent $50 million Series D round closing in August 2021.

Photo: Harness