Redgate Software is a software company based in

Cambridge, England Cambridge ( ) is a city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of ...

. It develops tools for developers and data professionals and maintains community websites. The company describes itself as offering end-to-end Database DevOps to help organizations streamline software development and get value from their data faster. Redgate produces

database management In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and ana ...

tools for

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a proprietary relational database management system developed by Microsoft using Structured Query Language (SQL, often pronounced "sequel"). As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of ...

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL ( ) also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source software, free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. PostgreSQL features transaction processing, transactions ...

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

MySQL MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

and

Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure, or just Azure ( /ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ ''AZH-ər, AY-zhər'', UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ ''AZ-ure, AY-zure''), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of ...

. It also produces advanced developer tools for .NET Framework, such as SmartAssembly and .NET Reflector. From 2007 to 2013, Redgate was featured in the ''Sunday Times ''100 best companies to work for in the United Kingdom. It has won numerous industry awards for its SQL Server management software.

History

The company was founded by Neil Davidson and Simon Galbraith in October 1999. It is named after Via Porta Rossa (Red Gate Street) in

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, close to where Davidson used to live. In 2005, Redgate launched Simple Talk, an online technical journal and community hub for working

and

.NET The .NET platform (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a free and open-source, managed code, managed computer software framework for Microsoft Windows, Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft emplo ...

developers, which has since expanded to include

, and

Oracle Database Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a proprietary multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation. It is a database commonly used for ru ...

. The journal is sponsored by Redgate, but retains

editorial independence An editorial, or leading article (UK) or leader (UK), is an article or any other written document, often unsigned, written by the senior editorial people or publisher of a newspaper or magazine, that expresses the publication's opinion about ...

. In addition to publishing articles, Simple Talk publishes books, most of which are available in a digital format. On 20 August 2008, Redgate announced it was taking responsibility for future development of the free tool .NET Reflector. On 22 March 2010, HyperBac Technologies (formerly known as Xceleon Technologies) was acquired by Redgate. HyperBac developed SQL software tools and products. In August 2009, Redgate launched Springboard, a startup incubator based in Cambridge, UK. For a period of three months Redgate provided living expenses and mentoring for teams to work from Redgate's offices. It was similar to

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

and Techstars in that it provided a small amount of capital up front but no equity was taken. In 2010, Redgate re-launched Springboard with a different model where teams would again receive

investment Investment is traditionally defined as the "commitment of resources into something expected to gain value over time". If an investment involves money, then it can be defined as a "commitment of money to receive more money later". From a broade ...

and mentoring, but this time in exchange for an equity stake. One such recipient of investment-for-equity in 2016 was

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

-based 3T Software Labs, makers of Studio 3T, the IDE for MongoDB, a popular NoSQL database. On 7 March 2017 Microsoft announced the inclusion of Redgate tools in

Visual Studio 2017 Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms ...

. Three components were included: ReadyRoll Core and SQL Prompt Core, both in the Enterprise edition of Visual Studio 2017, and SQL Search in all editions. On 28 January 2021 Redgate announced it had acquired the assets of the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS). In December 2021, Redgate announced that Jakub Lamik was taking up the position as CEO of the company, and that Galbraith would remain on the board as a non-executive director. In 2024, Redgate celebrated its 25th birthday.

References

External links

*
Simple Talk
(technical journal and community hub)
SQL Server Central
(SQL Server education and community website)
All Things Oracle
(technical journal) {{Coord, 52, 13, 46, N, 0, 9, 3, E, display=title Software companies of the United Kingdom Companies based in Cambridge Software companies established in 1999 1999 establishments in England