The next chapter of Flyway

In early 2010 I was doing some work around deployment automation. As part of this effort, I decided to tackle the problem of rolling out database changes along with the application consistently across environments, I wanted a tool that could be tightly integrated with application deployment, worked with plain SQL, and was simple to use. I was very surprised that my search did not come up with any solution that met my needs. This was very early days for continuous delivery and the tooling landscape wasn’t nearly as mature as it is today. So I decided to roll up my sleeves and build my own. On the 20th of April 2010, Flyway 0.0.1 was released on Google Code (yes, that used to be a thing!) under the Apache 2.0 license.

Not in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that over the 9 years that followed it would grow as incredibly as it did. Flyway is now downloaded millions of times each month. It has established itself as the industry defacto standard for database migrations with plain SQL. It now supports 18 different types of databases. It is available for Java, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux and Docker. There are integrations available for Maven, Gradle, ANT, SBT, Spring Boot, Play, Jenkins, XL Deploy, NPM, and much more. The community has written hundreds of blog articles about it in dozens of languages. People have been doing conference talks about it on every continent.

This vast and ongoing growth has enabled us to launch both a Pro and an Enterprise Edition in December 2017, effectively securing the long term economic viability of the project.

I am very proud of what we have accomplished so far and I am truly humbled by how positively all our hard work has been received.

Today I am honored to announce that I am passing the baton to a dynamic company with a solid track record in the database tooling space: Redgate Software. Please join me in welcoming them as new stewards of Flyway. They will be combining their vast industry expertise with everything you know and love about Flyway to take the project forward and make it even better than it is today.

As far as I am concerned, I’ll be around to support the transition but then gradually stepping down and taking some long overdue rest. It has been both a pleasure and honor to work with you all on Flyway through the years. I ride deeply satisfied into the sunset, knowing that Flyway’s future has never looked brighter.

From the deepest of my heart, thank you.

Axel Fontaine