Today UK-based global cloud communications company Infobip has signaled a strategic move to put developers front and centre of their company strategy with the acquisition of Shift Conference, also appointing its founder and CEO Ivan Burazin to the board as Chief Developer Experience Officer.
Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected customer experiences across all stages of the customer journey, across multiple online channels, all through via a single platform. Founded in 2003, it has expanded to include 65+ offices on six continents, serving and partnering with leading mobile operators, messaging apps, banks, social networks, tech companies, and aggregators. Now, the company has acquired Shift (founded in 2013), a tech conference franchise with experience in creating and producing technology conferences in multiple industry verticals such as Software Development, Fin-Tech and Artificial Intelligence.
The acquisition is set to provide both companies with new expertise and business opportunities in this space that will not only boost Infobip’s own conference offering but will also form the basis of Infobip’s all-new ‘Developer Experience’ department.
Along with creating global developer conferences, the department will be addressing the B2C market by conducting outreach to developers through teams of developer advocates and all-new Startup outreach programmes.
“The vision was always to become one of the largest developer conferences in the world. And also to strengthen Croatia’s connection to the world of software developers. So now with the backing of a Unicorn and the freedom to keep working on independently – the vision seems to have finally become possible,” said Ivan Burazin, Shift’s founder and CEO.
By bringing Shift inhouse, Infobip can build on the franchise’s flagship Shift Developer conference to take it to new heights, particularly with regards to setting new production standards for reducing complexity and increasing overall quality of event experience.
Additionally, it will provide the resources for Shift to expand globally, first to the US and then in the coming years to Latin America and South East Asia, transforming a successful regional player into a global one.
“Infobip is on a growth trajectory to expand rapidly into the B2C vertical, or more specifically Business-to-Developer (B2D) space. Having Ivan on board with his experience as the founder of Codeanywhere, a B2D SaaS company, and creator of Shift , the largest developer conference in the region, will be an asset to us going forward”, said Infobip’s CEO Silvio Kutić.
Outside of its external impact, ‘The Developer Experience’ department will offer various initiatives to empower internal Infobip developers, such as content creation seminars, Open Source time and opportunities for developers that want to embrace a public-facing role.