Atlassian, the $5.7 billion business software company that snuck in its much-anticipated IPO at the tail end of 2015, just bought the tiny startup StatusPage in its first acquisition since going public.
Atlassian notably has a pretty good track record with acquisitions. Its first and flagship product, the issue-tracking s0ftware JIRA, was built in-house. But chat app HipChat and code management tool BitBucket, its two other biggest businesses, both came to Atlassian via acquisition while they were still young startups.
What the Y Combinator-backed StatusPage brings to the table is all in the name. When a website or service goes down or is having other issues, the company operating the site needs a way to tell customers. StatusPage gives an easy way for its customers to quickly build a website that keeps users appraised of the status of their service.
“A service without status is like a mobile phone without service bars,” said Atlassian President Jay Simons, insofar as you have no clue if it’s going to work.
(If you’re anything like me, you probably wish that “Pokémon Go” had this kind of status indicator to tell when the hit game’s servers are too overloaded so you know to stop trying.)
Right now, StatusPage’s main customers are developer-focused companies like Twilio (another recent IPO), which provides voice and text services to companies like Uber — if you’ve gotten a text saying your Uber is arriving, you’ve used Twilio.
Twilio uses StatusPage to keep customers apprised when something’s gone wrong so they can plan accordingly. And it can also cut down on the time to fix any problems, since customers are kept in the loop with what exactly is wrong and when it’s expected to be back up.
But, more relevant to Atlassian, StatusPage cofounder Scott Klein says “a huge need has emerged” for his company’s product outside of Silicon Valley, too.
As more and more companies work hard at building software the same way the world’s largest tech companies do, it’s important that, even internally, developers and users stay apprised of service and app availability. It plays nicely into Atlassian’s ambitions around helping more companies act like tech companies.
In the future, Simons says, StatusPage will be integrated more tightly with tools like Atlassian’s JIRA, so that when StatusPage shows that something is wrong, teams can quickly be assigned to fix it. Meanwhile, StatusPage will stay up and available for all customers.
