December 2023 Summaries

This year saw significant engagement with HashiCorp certifications, with tens of thousands of people obtaining certifications and hundreds of millions downloading community software. The HashiCorp community grew, with over 27,000 attendees at the HashiConf event in San Francisco and more than 180 user groups worldwide. The company also expanded its partner ecosystem and produced a digital conference series, HashiTalks, reaching people in 10 different languages. More than 100 Core Contributors contributed to the development of HashiCorp products, and over 51,000 certifications were awarded. The Terraform Registry holds more than 3,500 providers and 15,000 modules, and HashiCorp community software was downloaded or used by 85.8% of the Fortune 500 companies. Despite a bittersweet departure of Co-Founder Mitchell Hashimoto, the HashiCorp community continued to grow and thrive in 2023.

HashiCorp has had another successful year, growing its customer base and expanding its partner ecosystem. The company's products have been adopted by numerous well-known companies, including Fortune 500 firms, to address their infrastructure and security issues. HashiCorp has also received awards for its collaboration with partners, showcasing its commitment to working with innovative and responsive companies in the industry. The company's technology integrations with cloud service providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure have accelerated, highlighting the growing need for standardized infrastructure as code solutions.

HashiCorp had a remarkable year, marked by significant technical advancements in AI, infrastructure as code, cloud automation, and security. The company's products, including Terraform, Consul, Nomad, Vault, Boundary, and Waypoint, saw numerous releases with new features that improved developer productivity, security, observability, and reliability. HashiCorp also made strides in its acquisitions, such as BluBracket, and expanded its offerings to address challenges like secret sprawl and privileged access management. With a focus on the future, HashiCorp is poised to continue building the future of cloud infrastructure and security with its users, customers, partners, and employees.

After nearly 15 years of leading HashiCorp, Mitchell Hashimoto is leaving the company he co-founded to take on new challenges. He had planned his departure for some time and feels ready to move on after celebrating 11 years with the company. Hashimoto's passion as an engineer goes beyond infrastructure, and he's excited to explore new areas. He reflects on the company's growth and impact, including its mainstream adoption of multi-cloud strategies, widespread use of its software, and a recent ranking as one of the top languages used in open-source projects. Hashimoto is leaving proud of his role in shaping HashiCorp but will continue to support the company from afar.

On-demand policy evaluation in HashiCorp Terraform Cloud allows users to evaluate the effects of policy changes before they are enforced, providing better visibility and control over infrastructure policy changes. This feature is designed to address challenges faced by compliance teams when introducing policy as code changes, such as syntax errors that can halt workspace runs. With on-demand policy evaluation, users can manually evaluate policies against a particular workspace without requiring a full plan or apply run, including workspaces not currently in scope of the policy set. This allows for more controlled and efficient management of policy changes, enabling users to measure the impact of new policies and compliance across their Terraform Cloud organization. The feature is now available in beta for use in HashiCorp Terraform Cloud, providing users with the tools they need to enforce policies across their infrastructure at scale.

''HashiCorp Vault Enterprise 1.15 introduces Certificate Issuance External Policy Services (CIEPS) to address the need for custom fields and extensions in X.509 public key infrastructure certificates, allowing customers to build a custom policy service that runs outside of Vault and offers granular control and flexibility in certificate structures, while maintaining a consistent user experience and complete auditability of the issuance process.

The integration of Red Hat Podman and HashiCorp Nomad has been improved to make it suitable for high-value applications and workflows, allowing users to run workloads in a more flexible way. The latest enhancements provide better support for Podman tasks, reducing the need for additional sidecars and improving performance. With the new integration, users can take advantage of rootless Podman, which offers significant savings on CPU, memory, disk, and bandwidth. Additionally, Nomad 1.7 introduces improved workload identity, Vault and Consul integrations, NUMA support, Nomad actions, and more, providing a more seamless experience for users. The improvements are part of the company's ongoing efforts to provide first-class support for various container engines, including Podman.

Deborah Carter, Founder and Managing Director of NewTechKids and PreparationTech Foundation, is a catalyst for change working to reshape technology education while advocating for diversity and inclusion. Her journey began with a passion for reading and writing, which led her to pursue a Master's degree in television journalism. After realizing the limitations of print journalism, she shifted towards technology, influenced by Oprah Winfrey's inspirational black woman and digital media influence. Tragically, becoming a single mother led her to identify a glaring gap in technology education. She founded NewTechKids, an initiative providing kids with experience in computer science, computational thinking, and critical thinking about technology through classes and bootcamps. Deborah continues to work towards systemic change to make sure that we empower a representative group of kids with future-proof 21st Century skills, aiming for inclusivity, diversity, and accessibility in the tech industry. Her vision extends beyond the classroom to create a future where technology education is comprehensive, inclusive, and accessible to all.

HashiCorp has been named the 2023 Global Technology Partner of the Year by Palo Alto Networks for the second consecutive year, recognizing its comprehensive product engineering work and go-to-market partnership that delivers customer solutions. The award is part of an elite group of partners who have excelled in delivering customer solutions over the past 12 months. HashiCorp's technology integrations with Palo Alto Networks involve multiple products, including Terraform, Consul, and Vault, addressing multi-cloud infrastructure management, security, scalability, and development speed. The partnership has provided customers with joint solutions for significant business challenges related to infrastructure and security.