Gearset is a platform for unparalleled Salesforce deployment success, continuous delivery, automated testing, and backups. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Gearset DevOps Advocate and host of the DevOps Diaries podcast Jack McCurdy to learn more about the company.
Jack McCurdy’s Background
Over the last four years, McCurdy has been helping Salesforce teams improve their release processes. And McCurdy said:
“I started out as an Enterprise Account Manager, helping large teams understand their Salesforce development process and how they can improve with DevOps, and for the past two years have been working as a DevOps Advocate — educating the community about DevOps and advising them on how they can build a great process with a culture to match.”
Formation Of Gearset
How did the idea for Gearset come together? McCurdy shared:
“Gearset began in 2015 with a team of DevOps engineers. They’d been working for over six years building DevOps tools for other platforms when they realized that Salesforce teams were experiencing real pain points in their release processes. After getting on the ground early to talk with Salesforce teams and really understand their frustrations, Gearset was born as a Salesforce DevOps deployment engine. From there, we’ve grown into a full DevOps platform, offering solutions from cradle to grave of the Salesforce development lifecycle.”
Favorite Memory
What has been McCurdy’s favorite memory working for the company so far? McCurdy reflected:
“There’s a number of memories and moments that have blown me away at Gearset. From my five years here, though, with every opportunity I’ve had to publicly present and speak on various stages, speaking to a standing-room-only crowd of over 100 people at Dreamforce 2023 tops it. That wouldn’t have been possible without the support of a number of colleagues and my Salesforce community peers, though. Building those relationships has proved, and continues to be, priceless.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? McCurdy explained:
“Gearset provides all the solutions for a complete Salesforce DevOps workflow. When our users begin their development work, they can seed sandboxes with masked production data for testing.”
“Any data and metadata changes can then be moved between environments with our deployment engine, which is packed with useful features such as smart comparison that shows all deleted, new, and changed items. Tight integrations with our user’s chosen version control systems, and support for advanced Salesforce metadata types like Vlocity and Salesforce CPQ are key to our users’ success.”
“Our CI/CD pipelines are easily configurable to a team’s preferred workflow — you can set up an automated back promotion to keep environments in sync, automate robust testing, or use CI jobs to push changes automatically to your next environment. Everything is underpinned by having Gearset automatically backup your Salesforce orgs, giving users the option to restore previous versions while keeping their data secure.”
Evolution Of Gearset’s Technology
How has Gearset technology evolved since launching? McCurdy noted:
“When Gearset began seven years ago, our immediate focus was improving Salesforce teams’ deployment speed and success — we’re proud to say we’ve reached that target with an industry-leading deployment success rate of 97% and our users naming increased productivity as the main benefit of DevOps. Since then, we’ve evolved into a full platform.”
“We provide everything from a robust backup solution to keep our users secure, through to a complete CI/CD pipeline that accelerates their workload through automation. Alongside providing the solutions for a full DevOps workflow, we’ve provided support for Salesforce data and metadata types that can be a real struggle for teams. Gearset now has over seventy problem analyzers to catch deployment errors, and most recently a deployment workflow for the CPQ configuration, which we know can be a preal challenge for the ecosystem.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? McCurdy cited:
“We’ve had a ton, but there’s one in particular that I’d like to call out: Getting the chance to meet so many members of the Salesforce community through community events and our own has helped Gearset to channel user requests and team experiences into our platform development. It’s allowed us to fulfill our core development goal of being user-led and ultimately build a platform that has helped so many teams.”
“Last year, we wanted to give back by setting up our own community event, DevOps Dreamin’, with all ticket sales donated to charity. The impact has been more than we could’ve anticipated. DevOps Dreamin’ is an exchange of ideas, advice and passion for Salesforce teams, no matter their level of experience with DevOps. We’ve hosted the event in both Seattle and Chicago, and held our second London edition in November. In my role as a DevOps Advocate, it’s energizing to meet and collaborate with so many folks and great to see the connections and inspiration that’s taken away from the event.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking McCurdy about customer success stories, he cited:
“The transformation that McKesson, the oldest and largest US healthcare company, has achieved with Gearset has been phenomenal. They have a large Salesforce team working on a ton of very complex projects, so it’s brilliant to see how productive they’ve been with Gearset while keeping all of their deployments successful and environments in sync too.
“I was delighted when McKesson’s release manager, Matt Avitable, told us: ‘The simplicity of Gearset was a big selling point for me,’ as we’ve always aimed to provide an intuitive platform that helps teams from the get-go. McKesson now has more time to focus on delivering value through new development work with Gearset’s comparison engine taking the pain out of deployments, and our CI/CD solution automatically integrating their changes every four hours.”
Funding
After asking McCurdy about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“After six years of organic growth, we decided to take on our first investment from Silversmith Capital Partners in 2022. Our partnership with them has allowed us to ramp up our efforts and commitment to delivering amazing products to our customers.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Gearset from its competition? McCurdy affirmed:
“Gearset is unique in the range of solutions we provide. We’re the only complete Salesforce DevOps platform — meaning everything can be achieved in one place.”
“We also provide unparalleled customer success. Our first response time for technical support through our in-app chat is just over three minutes, where we use instant messaging and screen shares to unblock users quickly. We’re proud of our user rating of 4.9/5 and are available for the full working day for 80% of our users. This helps our users get the most out of Gearset and see real Salesforce success.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? McCurdy concluded:
“Our core goal has always been to save Salesforce teams time and stress with simple but powerful DevOps solutions. The future of Gearset will always be shaped by that vision and achieved with user-led development. We want to continue setting the standard for Salesforce DevOps and provide the solutions needed for every low-code team.”
“We’re only able to achieve this goal with our fantastic team that’s grown from seven to now almost three hundred. I can’t wait to see how Gearset continues to grow as more fantastic folks join us to solve Salesforce release management challenges.”
