Chef CEO Barry Crist delivered the opening ChefConf keynote address on video from his Seattle home on Tuesday morning, with a registered audience of nearly 4,000 people, about four times as many as attended the event in person last year.

It happened to be a perfect illustration of the trends fueling Chef’s business.

The Seattle-based company specializes in software automation, helping companies quickly develop, deploy, configure, manage and secure a growing number of technologies across their operations. Chef says the acceleration of digital technologies across almost every industry has boosted the need for this type of automation.

After facing initial uncertainty over the impact of COVID-19 on its business, the company has experienced growing demand even from customers heavily impacted by the pandemic. Rather than retrenching during the economic downturn, Chef was cash-flow positive in the first quarter and is on track to achieve its first full year of profitability since it was founded in 2008, Crist said in an interview with GeekWire prior to the event.

“One of the big takeaways is that digital infrastructure is critical infrastructure,” Crist said. The pandemic has demonstrated that “everyone needs to be great at the digital world,” he said.

The privately held company doesn’t disclose detailed financial results, but said its first quarter was its strongest to date, including more than 100% growth in incremental recurring revenue. Chef has nearly 300 employees and is continuing to hire even as its operations have gone fully remote in recent months.

Chef Desktop, one of the new automation products released on Tuesday, brought in two significant deals in the first quarter even prior to the public launch, Crist said. The product, an adaptation of the existing Chef Infra technology, is designed to help companies deploy, manage and secure desktop and laptop PCs and workstations.

The company also released a new Chef Compliance product, building on Chef InSpec.

Both are examples of Chef’s expansion beyond its original focus on infrastructure automation, helping developers automatically configure and manage their servers. Chef’s executives say they now see opportunity in a wide range of enterprise automation technologies, including applications, compliance and Internet of Things automation, as well.

Chef’s momentum is the latest example of a company benefiting from the rise in remote work and a growing reliance on digital infrastructure. Recent earnings reports have also revealed a boom in cloud revenues and major growth in collaboration software. The trend bodes well for the broader Seattle tech economy, with its large concentration of companies focused on behind-the-scenes infrastructure and enterprise technologies.

At the same time, Crist acknowledged the other side of the coin, outlining the company’s charitable giving through All In Seattle before discussing the day’s business or product news in his keynote.

He also referenced the widespread budget cuts and layoffs at many companies and organizations, addressing the challenges faced by the developers, IT managers and technical operations specialists tuning into the event.

“You’re being asked more than ever to do more with less,” he said, calling their work “more important than ever” for the health of the U.S. and world economies.

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