Luke Kanies

Luke Kanies

Puppet Founder

Luke Kanies began writing the code that would become Puppet in 2005. As a sysadmin and consultant, he wasn't able to find automation tools his customers could rely on, and that they actually enjoyed using. Today, Puppet is the IT automation leader: More than 30,000 companies around the world manage their data center infrastructure and deployments with Puppet. As Puppet founder and its first CEO for over eleven years, Luke raised $87 million to fund Puppet's growth, and build Puppet into a thriving company.

Handing over the reins

by Luke Kanies | September 26, 2016

Puppet founder Luke Kanies hands over CEO reins to Sanjay Mirchandani, joins board of directors.

Gearing up for another decade of industry leadership

by Luke Kanies | April 5, 2016

Puppet's founder & CEO on the company name change, new president & COO, powerful new orchestrator & bridging from today's technology to tomorrow's.

Evolving Puppet for the Next 10 Years

by Luke Kanies | September 23, 2014

Puppet Labs founder & CEO Luke Kanies provides an overview of the new technical changes that help build a foundation for Puppet’s evolution into the future.

Fueling Growth: Puppet Labs Closes $40M Round

by Luke Kanies | June 19, 2014

Additional cash for hiring more talented people, to help our customers deliver great software, faster than ever.

A Message From the CEO

by Luke Kanies | May 2, 2014

As some of you may know, an applicant for a role at Puppet Labs reported via Twitter on the evening of Tuesday, April 29th that she had been sexually discriminated against in her application, and she thus concluded that Puppet Labs has a hostile work environment. She also reported that one of our employees disparaged […]

Introducing Bill Koefoed, Our New CFO

by Luke Kanies | December 18, 2013

Puppet Labs has hired a new CFO: Bill Koefoed, former head of investor relations at Microsoft & former CFO of Skype. CEO Luke Kanies tells us why.

Announcing Puppet Enterprise 3.0

by Luke Kanies | June 25, 2013

I'm proud to announce the release of Puppet Enterprise 3.0.

VMware Invests $30 Million In Puppet Labs

by Luke Kanies | January 23, 2013

Today I’m excited to announce that Puppet Labs and VMware have formed a new strategic partnership, after more than a year of working closely together from VMware’s initial investment in our company. This partnership involves VMware investing $30 million in Puppet Labs, as well as a commercial agreement to jointly deliver, market, and sell great […]

Why Puppet has its own configuration language

by Luke Kanies | August 2, 2012

I was O’Reilly’s Velocity conference back in June, giving a talk on hacking Puppet, and Puppet’s configuration language came up a lot. Most people love the language and find it the simplest way of expressing their configurations, but some are frustrated by how simple it is and wish they had a full Turing-complete language like Ruby for specification. I thought it would be worthwhile to discuss why Puppet has a custom language, and dive into some of the benefits and costs.

Announcing Puppet Enterprise 2.5

by Luke Kanies | March 28, 2012

I’m proud to announce the release of Puppet Enterprise 2.5, downloadable right now and free to use on up to 10 nodes. Just over a year ago, in February of 2011, Puppet Labs released our first commercial product, Puppet Enterprise. We were about 25 people at the time, and our revenue up until then consisted […]

VMware, Google Ventures, and Cisco invest in Puppet Labs

by Luke Kanies | November 29, 2011

VMware, Google Ventures, and Cisco have joined existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, True Ventures, and Radar Partners in our $8.5 million Series C financing.

Relicensing Puppet to Apache 2.0

by Luke Kanies | April 28, 2011

Puppet 2.7 has been released under the Apache 2.0 license instead of under the GPL. Here's why.