Gert and I started Aserto 4.5 years ago, with the mission to become the definitive authorization platform for the age of SaaS and cloud.

Over those years, the Aserto team built what we believe is one of the best authorization platforms on the planet. At the heart of our platform is the Topaz open-source authorizer.

Our commercialization efforts for Topaz have focused on operating a SaaS control plane that manages Topaz authorizers running in our customers’ environments. We believe this hybrid architecture provides customers with the benefits of central management, combined with distributed and local authorization, while reducing the operational burden of running a complex distributed system.

While there are technical advantages to this approach, unfortunately, we have not been able to make the economics of this model add up to a profitable business. As a result, we’re sunsetting the Aserto SaaS control plane and will shut it down by May 31, 2025.

Given that our core hypothesis did not materialize, we will also wind down Aserto as a commercial entity. With that said, we continue to believe that we’ve built a great open-source platform, and have a set of maintainers that will continue to support Topaz. They may also provide commercial support services to Topaz users who need them.

As founders, it’s incredibly hard for us to step away from what we’ve built. We deeply thank our customers, employees, and investors for being in the trenches with us and supporting us every step of the way.

To stay connected with the Topaz project and its evolution, visit topaz.sh.