Gliffy is software for diagramming via an

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

cloud-based Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over multip ...

app. It is used to create

UML diagram The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system. The creation of UML was originally m ...

s, floor plans,

Venn diagram A Venn diagram is a widely used diagram style that shows the logical relation between set (mathematics), sets, popularized by John Venn (1834–1923) in the 1880s. The diagrams are used to teach elementary set theory, and to illustrate simple ...

flowchart A flowchart is a type of diagram that represents a workflow or process. A flowchart can also be defined as a diagrammatic representation of an algorithm, a step-by-step approach to solving a task. The flowchart shows the steps as boxes of va ...

s and various other kinds of diagrams online. Gliffy diagrams can be shared with and edited by users in real time. The

SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is cons ...

is supported in all modern

web-browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

s, including Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer 9+. Gliffy's developer, the self-funded company Gliffy, Inc., was acquired by

Rogue Wave Software Rogue Wave Software was an American software development company based in Louisville, Colorado. It provided cross-platform software development tools and embedded components for parallel, data-intensive, and other high-performance computing (HPC ...

in October 2018, and Rogue Wave was subsequently acquired by

Perforce Software Perforce, legally Perforce Software, Inc., is an American developer of software used for developing and running applications, including version control software, web-based repository management, developer collaboration, application lifecycle mana ...

in January 2019.

History

Gliffy was founded in 2005 by friends and former coworkers, Chris Kohlhardt and Clint Dickson. The two software engineers saw a need for an online diagramming tool and decided to leave their full-time jobs and start a company to develop it. Kohlhardt contacted Mike Cannon-Brookes, one of the founders of

Atlassian Atlassian Corporation () is an Australian software company that develops products for software developers, project managers and other software development teams. The company is domiciled in Delaware, with global headquarters in Sydney, Australi ...

, an Australian enterprise software company. With his encouragement, Kohlhardt and Dickson created a Gliffy plugin for Atlassian’s collaboration product

Confluence In geography, a confluence (also: ''conflux'') occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river (main stem); o ...

, and business took off. In May 2006, Gliffy announced its public beta and by 2007 the beta was removed. In 2009, a new Gliffy plugin for Atlassian's JIRA product was unveiled and in 2010 Gliffy was added to the Google Apps marketplace. In early 2013, Gliffy moved to an all HTML5 platform, at the same time adding Visio support. Gliffy integrates with

Google Apps Google Workspace (formerly known as Google Apps and later G Suite) is a collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It consists of Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Meet ...

Google Drive Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service developed by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud (on Google's servers), synchronize files across devices, and share files. In addi ...

, JIRA, and

, and has over two million registered users. It was acquired by

in October 2018, which was then acquired by

Perforce Perforce, legally Perforce Software, Inc., is an American developer of software used for developing and running applications, including version control software, web-based repository management, developer collaboration, application lifecycle man ...

in January 2019.

Timeline

* August 2006: Gliffy adds

UML The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a general-purpose, developmental modeling language in the field of software engineering that is intended to provide a standard way to visualize the design of a system. The creation of UML was originally m ...

shapes * November 2006: Gliffy Plugin for

Atlassian Confluence Confluence is a web-based corporate wiki developed by Australian software company Atlassian. Atlassian wrote Confluence in the Java programming language and first published it in 2004. Confluence Standalone comes with a built-in Tomcat web ser ...

unveiled * February 2007: Beta removed * January 2009: Gliffy Plugin for Atlassian Jira unveiled * July 2010: Gliffy added to Google Apps marketplace * January 2012: Gliffy reaches 1 million users * October 2012: Gliffy moves to

Features

Gliffy features a

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

interface and real-time

online collaboration Computer-supported collaboration research focuses on technology that affects groups, organizations, communities and societies, e.g., voice mail and text chat. It grew from cooperative work study of supporting people's work activities and working re ...

and sharing capabilities. It allows users to export their diagrams in multiple formats including:

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

, PNG and SVG. It is supported in all modern web browsers, including

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

, and

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

9+. Gliffy integrates with

, Jira, and Confluence.

References

External links

*{{official Website, https://www.gliffy.com Diagramming software 2005 software HTML5 Data visualization software