Originally reported by DevOps.com. Original article date: April 7, 2020.
Copado Opens Its Platform to COVID-19 Application Developers
Copado, a DevOps platform purpose-built for building and deploying applications on Salesforce SaaS infrastructure, announced it would make its platform available at no charge to any team developing applications aimed at combating the COVID-19 pandemic. The move was part of a broader initiative the company called Copado Cares.
The initiative aligned with a parallel effort from Salesforce itself — the Salesforce Cares program — which provided free access to select Salesforce cloud applications during the pandemic.
Free DevOps Certifications and Virtual Training
Beyond free platform access, Copado launched a virtual DevOps training center and removed the cost barrier to its DevOps certification program. Key details of the offer included:
- Free certifications for 90 days — available to anyone in the Salesforce ecosystem who could pass an online examination. Copado had previously charged $250 per certification.
- Virtual training center — an online resource hub aimed at helping Salesforce developers and administrators learn DevOps practices without in-person instruction.
- 10,000 practitioners targeted — Andrew Leigh, Copado’s Senior Vice President for Marketing and Alliances, stated the program’s goal was to train more than 10,000 individuals in DevOps best practices on Salesforce platforms within the year.
Why Salesforce DevOps Mattered During the Pandemic
The COVID-19 crisis forced organizations across industries to accelerate digital transformation on a compressed timeline. Leigh argued that Salesforce-based applications would become increasingly central to business continuity plans as remote work became the norm. Businesses needed to deploy digital marketing tools, customer support systems, and service delivery applications rapidly — often within days rather than months.
Leigh pointed to low-code development tools — a core characteristic of the Salesforce platform — as the mechanism that made this rapid deployment feasible. Because these tools ship pre-integrated with a suite of core Salesforce applications, development teams do not need to build foundational functionality from scratch. Combining low-code tooling with disciplined DevOps practices, he argued, could significantly compress application delivery timelines.
Reliability Requirements for Healthcare Applications
Leigh placed particular emphasis on the healthcare sector, where new COVID-19 applications needed to be production-ready from the moment of deployment — with no tolerance for instability or downtime. He argued that building on a mature SaaS platform reduced foundational risk, while rigorous DevOps processes — including automated testing, version control, and controlled release pipelines — were essential to ensuring application reliability under emergency conditions.
Broader Context: Cloud Adoption Acceleration
The initiative also reflected a wider industry dynamic. Organizations that had already embraced cloud-based digital processes demonstrated greater operational resilience during the crisis. Sectors such as online education and entertainment saw dramatic demand growth. Meanwhile, the economic pressure created by the pandemic was widely expected to accelerate SaaS adoption across the enterprise, as per-user consumption models offered more financial flexibility than large upfront software investments.
Network reliability remained a practical challenge — uneven bandwidth availability affected remote workers’ access to cloud applications — but Leigh noted that organizations were actively expanding capacity for critical users and customers.
Key Takeaways for DevOps Teams
- Copado’s Copado Cares program provided free platform access for COVID-19 application development projects on Salesforce.
- DevOps certifications were waived (previously $250 each) for 90 days to lower the barrier to professional development during the crisis.
- Low-code platforms combined with DevOps best practices can enable rapid, reliable application delivery — a lesson with relevance beyond pandemic response.
- Organizations with mature digital and DevOps practices proved more resilient when forced to pivot quickly to remote operations.
This article is based on reporting originally published by DevOps.com in April 2020. Program terms and availability may have changed since the original announcement.