Introducing Varealis

Since 2014, I have had my sights set on the development of a uniquely innovative software platform that will revolutionise CI/CD pipelines, empowering them to supply confidence that is impossible to reach without manual intervention of exceptionally talented engineers and data analysts. During the last five years, RadSpider has been improved and optimised until it became clear it could become a PaaS offering. I also realised that using the skills and expertise I had developed over the years, I had much more than just RadSpider to offer the world. That was when I founded Varealis.

Before I get ahead of myself: Hi. I’m Jamie, a Software Engineer turned Entrepreneur based in Bristol, United Kingdom. I got my Computer Science Degree from the University of Bath and since then have been working a Full-Stack DevOps Developer. During my career I have been in a lot of challenging roles, I have architected software platforms and the teams and processes required in order to deliver them. I have never been the kind of person to sit back and ride the current - which is why I took on RadSpider in the first place knowing it would be a massive project that would take a lot of time and energy to complete.

A small part of me feels apprehensive introducing Varealis and RadSpider formally to you for the first time. I have never cooked a turkey before, but this must be what it feels like to watch someone poised to cut the first slice of the turkey that you have slaved over all day. Everyone is watching, cutlery in hand, hoping that it won't turn out to be an oversized, over-hyped, dry chicken. Thankfully, I think I have something much more exciting then a chicken, or a turkey for that matter.

RadSpider

RadSpider predates the creation of Varealis by about 3 or 4 years. It was an idea I first had during my placement year, and is something I pursued as part of my dissertation and have been working on ever since. RadSpider was first developed as a proof of concept and then iterated upon using market research from some of the South West's most prominent software development companies until it was clear that in order to succeed it had to become a PaaS offering in the cloud which I started in mid 2017.

I believe that RadSpider will become the next big thing in Software Development and will become as well known as other CI/CD services such as Octopus Deploy, Jenkins or Azure DevOps. I am also aware of the huge amount of development that needs to be done in order to get to that point. I also realised that if RadSpider was to grow and keep pace with the industry as a whole, it would need something bigger than just me supporting it. If only I could find a way to bundle RadSpider and some of the other things I'm passionate about under one cohesive roof...

Varealis

Varealis (pronounced Var-ee-al-is) was first created in late 2017 but the company was officially founded in late 2018. The name was formed from Variable and Borealis from the Aurora Borealis (or northern lights). Varealis is built upon the core belief that quality code leads to quality products, and by practicing what we preach, we intend to offer a collection of quality products and services that give developers the tools that they need to do what they do best.

This belief is a key driver in the development of RadSpider and our first service offering Code Reviews as a Service. I believe that both are (or will be) uniquely capable at delivering a means not only monitoring code quality but also ensuring that it is either maintained or improved over time. Alongside these two initial offerings, we will also be using Varealis to help share knowledge and experience with the broader Software Development Community. We will be doing this primarily from this technical blog, but we also have ambitions to speak at conferences and meetups in the local area.

As developers we regularly come across and solve problems that others will inevitably have to face - and we hope that by sharing our solutions for others to use we can become a trustworthy and dependable member of the development community. This will include everything from code packages (via GitHub or package management systems like Nuget) to technical 'How-to' style blogs. We will be slowly adding more features to this blog in order to better support conversation and collaborative learning.

So that's who we are and what we are striving for. I hope that shines some light on what it is we are doing and why it is we are doing it. If you have any questions, thoughts or suggestions then please do reach out via the site or via Twitter.