Gliffy is software for diagramming via an

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

cloud-based Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

app. It is used to create UML diagrams, floor plans, Venn diagrams,

flowcharts A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents a workflow or process. A flowchart can also be defined as a diagrammatic representation of an algorithm, a step-by-step approach to solving a task. The flowchart shows the steps as boxes of va ...

and various other kinds of diagrams online. Gliffy diagrams can be shared with and edited by users in real time. The

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a cloud computing service model where the provider offers use of application software to a client and manages all needed physical and software resources. SaaS is usually accessed via a web application. Unlike oth ...

is supported in all modern web-browsers, including Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer 9+. Gliffy's developer, the self-funded company Gliffy, Inc., was acquired by

Rogue Wave Software Rogue Wave Software was an American software development company based in Louisville, Colorado. It provided cross-platform software development tools and embedded components for parallel, data-intensive, and other high-performance computing (HPC ...

in October 2018, and Rogue Wave was subsequently acquired by

Perforce Software Perforce Software, Inc. is an American developer of software used for developing and running applications, including version control software, web-based repository management, developer collaboration, application lifecycle management, web applica ...

in January 2019.

History

Gliffy was founded in 2005 by friends and former coworkers, Chris Kohlhardt and Clint Dickson. The two software engineers saw a need for an online diagramming tool and decided to leave their full-time jobs and start a company to develop it. Kohlhardt contacted Mike Cannon-Brookes, one of the founders of

Atlassian Atlassian Corporation () is an Australia, Australian-United States, American proprietary software company that specializes in collaboration tools designed primarily for software development and project management. Domicile (law), Domiciled in ...

, an Australian enterprise software company. With his encouragement, Kohlhardt and Dickson created a Gliffy plugin for Atlassian’s collaboration product

Confluence In geography, a confluence (also ''conflux'') occurs where two or more watercourses join to form a single channel (geography), channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main ...

, and business took off. In May 2006, Gliffy announced its public beta and by 2007 the beta was removed. In 2009, a new Gliffy plugin for Atlassian's JIRA product was unveiled and in 2010 Gliffy was added to the Google Apps marketplace. In 2012, Gliffy moved to an all HTML5 platform, at the same time adding Visio support. Gliffy integrates with

Google Apps Google Workspace (formerly G Suite, formerly Google Apps) is a collection of cloud computing, Productivity software, productivity and Collaborative software, collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It con ...

Google Drive Google Drive is a file-hosting service and synchronization service developed by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud (on Google servers), synchronize files across devices, and share files ...

, JIRA, and

, and has over 18 million registered users. It was acquired by

in October 2018, which was then acquired by Perforce in January 2019.

Timeline

* August 2006: Gliffy adds UML shapes * November 2006: Gliffy Plugin for

Atlassian Confluence Confluence is a web-based corporate wiki developed by Australian software company Atlassian. Atlassian wrote Confluence in the Java (programming language), Java programming language and first published it in 2004. Confluence Standalone comes ...

unveiled * February 2007: Beta removed * January 2009: Gliffy Plugin for Atlassian Jira unveiled * July 2010: Gliffy added to Google Apps marketplace * January 2012: Gliffy reaches 1 million users * June 2012: Gliffy joins the Atlassian Marketplace * October 2012: Gliffy moves to

* October 2018: Gliffy is acquired by Rogue Wave Software * January 2019: Gliffy is acquired by Perforce Software

Features

Gliffy features a

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

interface and real-time online collaboration and sharing capabilities. It allows users to export their diagrams in multiple formats including:

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

, PNG and SVG. It is supported in all modern web browsers, including

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

, and

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

9+. Additional features: * Interactive diagrams allow viewers to show and hide layers of information * Fully searchable diagram text * Embedded versions of diagrams automatically update Gliffy integrates with

, Jira, and Confluence.

References

External links

*{{official Website, https://www.gliffy.com Diagramming software 2005 software HTML5 Data and information visualization software