Platform.sh and Blackfire.io unite to enhance observability

25 May, 2021

Blackfire.io is the first fully integrated Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and performance profiling suite that helps apps run faster, and makes development teams smarter, with an intelligent recommendation engine

San Francisco, May 25, 2021--Platform.sh today has announced its intent to acquire Blackfire SAS, a privately held company headquartered in Paris, France. Blackfire is the only fully integrated application performance profiling, testing, monitoring, and optimization suite for web sites and applications. The Blackfire team, led by founder and CEO Fabien Potencier, creator of Symfony–the leading PHP web application framework–will join Platform.sh. Potencier will join the Platform.sh executive team.

Blackfire brings two key technologies to Platform.sh:

Blackfire Profiler enables developers to pinpoint performance bottlenecks within their applications with robust tracing and call graphs, decreasing problem resolution time, and increasing developer productivity.
Blackfire Monitoring then continuously monitors application performance and alerts developers and devops teams to issues that may arise in production, and suggests areas to troubleshoot. Blackfire.io’s recommendation engine identifies areas for improvement in all PHP and Python applications, including common frameworks like Drupal, WordPress, Magento, and Django, and is extensible with custom tests written for business use cases.

Blackfire works integrally with the Platform.sh workflow. Website fleet owners can see an overview of the health of all their live sites and apps at a glance, identify best practices, and focus efforts on improvement of user experience. Instant cloning of production apps to development environments enables teams to use Blackfire Profiler to assess the performance of their code before they go live. Because Platform.sh natively manages every change to code and configuration with Git, an auditable revision control system, teams can pinpoint exactly where performance-affecting changes were introduced in moments, implement testing techniques and validate iterations against their custom performance budget.

Website and app users expect speed. In fact, 53% of users will abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load. To deliver on ecommerce sales goals, audience growth KPIs, or SEO value, site owners must deliver consistently fast experiences and respond to market changes. The fast-paced evolution of web technologies increases the complexity for teams to build and maintain applications. Platform.sh removes the burden of infrastructure management while supporting all latest technologies, and helps teams implement automated quality assurance best practices. By joining forces with Blackfire, the tight integration of technologies offer unprecedented visibility in vital application and infrastructure metrics. Businesses will no longer be let in the dark when creating and deploying new features and applications. And that experience is delivered out-of-the-box. Teams can focus on what matters in the moment and plan for continuous improvement. At scale: whether one app or hundreds, Platform.sh and Blackfire give teams observability into the performance of all of their applications, so the quality of user experience can be maintained, and continuously improved, even as new apps are added to the fleet, or traffic ebbs and flows.

Platform.sh will continue to support Blackfire Profiler and Blackfire Monitoring customers regardless of where their websites and applications run. Blackfire will also become available with zero installation or configuration directly within Platform.sh.

“With this acquisition Platform.sh furthers our vision that organizations should focus on building meaningful digital applications and experiences with relevant business outcomes, instead of managing infrastructure. With the addition of Blackfire to Platform.sh our customers can continuously track the performance of their entire website fleet, and discover areas to improve their end users’ experience. We are also delighted to work closely with Fabien and his team. Fabien’s track record as an open-source leader and an entrepreneur speaks for itself. We believe that his unique insights on the web industry will be highly valuable to steer the company towards even greater customer satisfaction.” –Fred Plais, CEO, Platform.sh

“We’re thrilled to join forces with Platform.sh. We have collaborated and shared a vision for years: to focus on building their value, businesses need a unified platform that seamlessly brings their ideas to life. Platform.sh offers a robust technology for teams to work on applications from development to production, through continuous integration and staging, and back. Blackfire.io gives them the observability they need at each step of this lifecycle, to identify and fix performance issues as early as possible.” –Fabien Potencier, CEO, Blackfire.io

“Building quality software is hard. Blackfire has been helping CCM Benchmark Group (www.journaldunet.com, www.linternaute.com) for years, in every step of the devops cycle, first with Blackfire Profiler and today with Blackfire Monitoring. Since day 1, Platform.sh and Blackfire have been built with the same goal in mind: optimize every step of web engineering. Tomorrow I'm sure they will help developers and companies to build high quality software that scales.” -Xavier Leune, VP Engineering, Groupe Figaro/CCM Benchmark

About Platform.sh

Platform.sh is the end-to-end PaaS that enables organizations to build, run, and scale websites and apps in the languages and frameworks they need to innovate. We've created the leading web platform that scales as organizations grow. Whether building a single site or deploying and managing a fleet of applications worldwide, Platform.sh takes care of hosting, management, and DevOps, so businesses can focus on development with our included tools, APIs and workflows. Founded in Paris in 2015 by Frederic Plais, Damien Tournoud, and Ori Pekelman, Platform.sh is trusted by more than 5000 organizations globally to create the best digital experiences.

About Blackfire.io

Blackfire.io is the code observability SaaS that enables businesses to improve the performance of their web applications. We’ve created the reference solution on the PHP market for organizations which have high stakes in delivering optimal user experiences to their customer base, and now enter the Python and Golang markets. From development to production, Blackfire.io offers detailed and intelligent insights that let teams prevent, and proactively fix issues. Founded in Paris in 2018 by Fabien Potencier and Grégory Pascal, Blackfire.io is trusted by more than 1500 organizations globally to scale the best digital experiences.