With increased tech regulation on the horizon, Arlington’s Stacklet is launching a new cloud management platform

After developing the popular Cloud Custodian open source project, cofounders Travis Stanfield and Kapil Thangavelu knew there was more to create for companies moving into the cloud space. 

“So if you’re a big company and you want to use the cloud, you have to have the guardrails in place for safety before you let people come into the new playground,” Stanfield told Technical.ly. “With our open source getting so popular, we decided to form an enterprise-focused company called Stacklet that helps hold the enterprises’ hands as we build and deploy and automate these solutions in the cloud.”

Stacklet, an open-source cloud management software platform developed by Stanfield and Thangavelu, made a splash when it came out of stealth last August with $4 million in seed funding. Following an additional $18 million Series A raise in January, the company is launching two new platforms on Wednesday, called Stacklet Platform and AssetDB, to help companies using cloud software.

Stanfield said that enterprises have a need for uniform standards in the cloud around security, cost compliance and operations, which he hopes Stacklet can help provide. He added that the company is working on its commercial tools that are flexible and with domain-specific language, making it “tuned specifically” for cloud use.

“The open source solution is a DIY experience,” Stanfield said. “So if you’re an enterprise company and you want a managed experience, you want an enterprise-focused offering, and that’s what we deliver.”

Stacklet Platform helps organizations keep up with changing compliance needs, improve security posture, use standard policy language across multiple clouds and control costs. For its part, AssetDB offers real-time visibility into anything a company might be using the cloud for. Stanfield said that the platform is also serverless and event-based, so it’s more flexible for use.

Stacklet cofounders Kapil Thangavelu, CTO, and Travis Stanfield, CEO.

Since its launch, the Arlington-based company has grown from 15 to 30 employees, including contractors, with seven customers using its system with Fortune 2000 design partners. Liam Randall, VP of business development at Stacklet, said that the RealLIST Startups 2021 honoree is currently focusing on growing its core products and customer base, while also growing the booming community of those looking at open source solutions.

“When you look at how technologies evolved over time, essentially open source just continues to eat the world,” Randall said.

Currently, Stanfield said that the main drivers for enterprises having a need for cloud managment software include the productivity increase and potential for cost savings. But going forward, he added that there’s increasing complexity around regulations and standards for things like data privacy, making a system offers control while retaining flexibility more appealing.

Randall noted that enterprises need the government to secure clients, and he only anticipates regulations increasing around big tech in D.C. and globally.

“If we think of the developers as wanting to drive fast on the road, this [means we] can’t let them on the track until you have the guardrails in place, they have the fire extinguishers, the ground crew,” Randall said. “I think that here in D.C., governance and regular regulation is a big deal, and for big tech it’s increasingly a big deal globally…We’re going to see higher regulatory requirements across all tech.”