ClusterHQ

About ClusterHQ

ClusterHQ was a Bristol, UK-based company focused on data management for containerized applications, specifically targeting the Docker ecosystem. The firm was established in April 2008 by Luke Marsden and Rob Haswell. Marsden, a Computer Science graduate from Oxford University, co-founded the company inspired by the operational challenges of running web applications and previously had experience building and running a web hosting company. Initially named HybridCluster, the company pivoted to the Docker space in 2014, which coincided with raising a Series A and recruiting Silicon Valley veteran Mark Davis as CEO.

The company's core business was to address the challenge of managing stateful applications, like databases, within containers. While containers were well-suited for stateless applications, persisting and moving data volumes as containers were relocated was a significant hurdle. ClusterHQ's main product, Flocker, was an open-source data volume manager designed to make data as portable as the containers themselves. This allowed developers to run databases, queues, and key-value stores in Docker and move them between servers for tasks like load balancing or disaster recovery. The business model appeared to be centered around an open-core strategy, providing Flocker as a free, open-source tool while planning to offer commercial support and additional proprietary tools like Volume Hub, a dashboard for managing data volumes.

ClusterHQ secured a total of $15 million in funding over three rounds from investors including Accel, Canaan Partners, and DN Capital. A significant $12 million Series A round was closed in February 2015 to expand its engineering team and community efforts. Despite its early work in the stateful container space, the company faced a rapidly evolving market. The concept of stateful containers gained widespread industry attention, and major players like Docker began building their own integrated storage solutions. In December 2016, CEO Mark Davis announced the immediate shutdown of all operations, citing a "confluence of reasons" and noting that pioneers often end up with "arrows in their backs" as the market they helped create becomes crowded. The company's key product, Flocker, was left as an open-source project.