ControlMonkey is a fully end-to-end Terraform automation platform. From AI-powered code generation to best-in-class automations, ControlMonkey gives cloud teams a powerful, unified way to visualize, spin-up, automate and govern cloud infrastructure – end-to-end, at any scale, for any future. Pulse 2.0 interviewed ControlMonkey co-founder and CEO Aharon Twizer to learn more about the company.
Aharon Twizer’s Background
Above: ControlMonkey co-founders CEO Aharon Twizer (R) and CTO Ori Yemini (L) in the company’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. ControlMonkey is the only end-to-end Terraform automation platform offering Total Cloud Control to DevOps teams in every industry worldwide.
How did you get started? Twizer shared:
“I’ve been in technology for more than twenty years. At first, I worked across various industries like ad tech and gaming. Then, in 2015, I founded my first company, SpotInst, a cloud optimization platform, where I served as CTO. The whole idea was to tackle the soaring costs of the cloud, which we were able to reduce by 80%. It worked so well that NetApp bought Spot in 2020 for $450 million. After that, I joined AWS as a principal solution architect, and for a time helped start-ups with go-to-market and product innovation– think big players, like Coralogix, Wiz and Granulate. In 2022, I founded ControlMonkey, where I’m CEO today.”
Formation Of ControlMonkey
How did the idea for ControlMonkey come together? Twizer shared:
“In my career, I’ve talked to hundreds of cloud leaders. Maybe thousands. Several years ago, I started hearing a common theme: cloud teams everywhere were really struggling to govern and automate infrastructure at scale. They were managing dozens of cloud tools, and the complexity was only going to get worse. That’s when I first realized what I call the ‘Infrastructure Delivery Revolution’ was underway.”
“At that point, managing cloud infra was just too hard. Mostly because nothing on the market delivered the full promise of IaC–all the infra delivery tools were just point solutions that solved only a small part of the bigger problem. And solving 30% of the problem doesn’t, really, especially when you’re scaling. I felt there had to be a way for enterprises to manage infra delivery as quickly, easily, and securely as they manage software. It turns out there was a way to do it, theoretically: true end-to-end cloud automation. But no one was doing it. So we started ControlMonkey to build it.”
Core Products
What is ControlMonkey’s core product and feature set? Twizer explained:
“ControlMonkey is the first fully-featured cloud automation platform utilizing Terraform that connects your git repositories and IaC to your actual cloud configuration. Because our platform is end-to-end, it leapfrogs those point-solution automation tools I mentioned, and offers a new, far more advanced platform for ground-up, full automation. And it’s all about helping cloud teams maximize their control. So we call our vision for the industry, ‘Total Cloud Control.’”
“We expect Total Cloud Control to be the cloud automation standard for at least the next twenty years. And a few features separate ControlMonkey from everything that’s come before:
- Deterministic AI that automatically generates Terraform code to achieve 100% IaC coverage
- Remediation engines that constantly scan for and fix problems like drift, security vulnerabilities, and cost inefficiencies to keep a cloud always optimized
- Self-service quality gates that shift left security and organizational policies with a catalog of predefined blueprints so teams can launch new, compliant environments in minutes
- Disaster recovery solutions that capture a daily snapshot of cloud configurations to restore to any point in time quickly
- 100% Cloud vs. Code Integrity, with asset inventory, deviation verification, and click-ops scanning
Add all this up, and ControlMonkey’s customers see a more than 30% increase in their team’s productivity, a 3X boost in deployment speed, and 100% cloud configuration back-up. We’re thrilled with these results, of course, but are already working to deliver even bigger gains.”
Favorite Memory
What’s your favorite memory working at ControlMonkey so far? Twizer reflected:
“It’s not just one moment–it’s every time we run a proof-of-concept and compete against tools that started way earlier and raised way more money than we did–and we win. It happens all the time, because we took a totally different approach from the rest of the industry. We did the incredibly difficult work of building a true, end-to-end platform.”
“Building it that way from the start allows us to stay lean and responsive to our customers–we’re obsessed with them. So they understand that our platform and our company will adapt and scale with their needs. Since we do things differently, every time a customer chooses us over our competitors, that’s my favorite moment. It tells me our choice was the right one. And still is.”
Surprise About Launching The Company
What’s an assumption you made when launching ControlMonkey that turned out not to be right? Twizer acknowledged:
“Honestly, I thought end-to-end cloud automation would be a tougher sell. When we started, I was surprised to see the majority of companies were already heavily invested in IaC. Cloud teams saw lots of benefits to it, but they were also just starting to realize the headaches that would come with scale, and only get worse. Meaning, they understood that the dozens of cloud tools they used would quickly balloon; that there was no way to manage them manually; and that speed and reliability needs were only going to grow. We entered the market at the right time because everyone was looking around at the available tools wondering, ‘how are we actually going to manage all this?’ So I just started telling people: ‘ControlMonkey is how.’ And then I’d demo the platform, and they’d sign-up right then. And sales took off. Of course, it helps that we’re right: end-to-end automation is truly the only way to scale cloud infra delivery reliably.”
Total Addressable Market
What’s the total addressable market TAM the company is pursuing? Twizer assessed:
“As I mentioned a minute ago, the whole industry is in the middle of an Infrastructure Delivery Revolution. Every Fortune 1000 company–actually, every enterprise in the world–is rapidly migrating their infrastructure to the cloud. But they’re learning that managing cloud infra is incredibly complex and risky without the right tools. Put another way, they’re losing control of their clouds, because most of the tools that govern the cloud haven’t kept pace with the needs of cloud teams. Full, end-to-end automation is the only way to solve this, or the problem will just get bigger and more costly.”
“It was the same way twenty years ago when companies like Github and JFrog led the Software Delivery Revolution: they completely modernized how companies deploy software and became the most valuable players in the enterprise software industry. Every company is going to need end-to-end automation, and they’re starting to figure it out… which just means every company needs ControlMonkey. So, we’re after everyone who wants Total Cloud Control. Which means every enterprise in the world. That’s a pretty big TAM.”
Evolution Of The Category
How do you see the category evolving? Twizer noted:
“The most important factor driving evolution is how cloud teams see their role. DevOps engineers now totally understand they need to be more proactive. They don’t need to spend their time being technicians: no more manually provisioning infra, dealing with tickets, or policing misconfigurations–that’s what end-to-end automation is for. Instead, with a fully automated cloud, they can be innovators. They can think strategically about moving their business forward. Plus, with the complexity of scaling multiple environments, they don’t have a choice but to be more strategic. And ControlMonkey is how to make that all happen.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Twizer concluded:
“Twenty years ago, Github and JFrog saw the future of software delivery, and built it. We want to do the same thing for infrastructure delivery: end-to-end automation is the only way to fulfill the promise of IaC and effectively control cloud infra at scale. And we’re confident ControlMonkey is the most advanced platform to help teams do it–today and for the next twenty years. So, what’s our goal? Own the category. And we’re in a strong position to do that. We’ve got the platform, the capital and–most importantly–the incredibly experienced team. 2025 will be big for us, and for the industry. Stay tuned.”
