Reductive Labs scores $2M for Puppet IT automation tool
Portland, Oregon-based Reductive Labs makes Puppet, a tool for automating IT resources. Can we just say it? Puppet lets companies cut the sizes of their IT staffs. In a shrinking economy, that’s a hot ticket. Valley early-stage investor True Ventures led Reductive’s A round, which was rounded out with angel money. Reductive claims that Puppet’s users include Google, Digg, Twitter, The New York Stock Exchange, Barclays Capital, Oracle, Sun, Red Hat, Harvard Law School, and Stanford University.
Reductive doesn’t talk about its management team on its site, but CEO Luke Kanies is a former consultant and O’Reilly blogger who specialized in Unix automation and configuration management. Reductive is Kanies’ attempt to build his personal know-how, experience and contacts into a product and a company instead of more consulting work.
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About the Author, Paul Boutin
Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.