As CloudBees acquires Codeship, what's next for DevOps? Computing talks to the two CEOs

Computing asks Sacha Labourey and Moritz Plassnig about the acquisition and what its implications are more widely

CloudBees has acquired fellow DevOps toolmaker Codeship, marking a consolidation in the continuous integration / continuous delivery (CI/CD) space.

CloudBees, the more established of the two organisations, has traditionally focused on larger organisations with its Enterprise Jenkins package, Jenkins being the open source CI/CD automation server. Codeship provides CI/CD services hosted in the public cloud, including free community versions. There is a range of options designed to cater for the needs of smaller companies in two main ranges Codeship Basic, set up for typical workloads, and Codeship Pro which adds more flexibility for custom deployments and Docker support.

The acquisition, announced this week, gives CloudBees a "broader portfolio of CI/CD solutions for organisations of all sizes - and with support for several CI/CD philosophies and approaches", according to a statement from the firm. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

DevOps has long been characterised by disparate toolsets but consolidations are now picking up. Atlassian has been buying up many smaller players for example, and this acquisition of Codeship by CloudBees is part of the same trend. CloudBees insists the acquisition does not mark a moving away from Jenkins but rather a desire "to bring a full range of offerings, including the simplicity of a SaaS platform, to the Jenkins user community."

Computing asked the CEOs of CloudBees and Codeship - Sacha Labourey and Moritz Plassnig - about the acquisition and what its implications are more widely.

Computing: Will you be retaining the Codeship name?

Sacha Labourey, CloudBees: Yes. Codeship has built significant brand recognition in the SaaS CI/CD space and the Codeship brand will continue to represent the Codeship platform. CloudBees will continue to serve Codeship customers and develop the Codeship products under the "Codeship by CloudBees" brand.

What will happen to existing customers of Codeship?

SL: Codeship customers will benefit from the acquisition in several ways. Their investment in Codeship tools will now be backed by a larger company with more extensive customer service, support and success organisations. They will become partners with one of the best-known CI/CD leaders in the industry with extensive knowledge and experience in Jenkins, CI/CD and DevOps. Over time, they will benefit from a more extensive solution portfolio and will be able to easily incorporate additional CI/CD functions and capabilities (e.g. CD-X and CloudBees DevOptics). Additionally, they will be able to take advantage of the industry-leading Jenkins World global DevOps events to learn from their peers and other industry leaders.

What does Codeship do better than CloudBees at present, and vice versa?

Moritz Plassnig, Codeship: CloudBees is tremendously successful in the

enterprise market with their on-premise offerings. Codeship is focusing on the SMB and midmarket and only available as a SaaS product in the cloud. Our combined products allow customers to use CloudBees across the board, from on-premise to the public cloud.

Will the free tier remain?

MP: Yes. Codeship's free tier for both products (Codeship Basic and Codeship Pro) will remain as it is right now. We're also continuing to offer our two products for free for the open source community.

Will there be more overall tiers of pricing as a result of catering for smaller companies?

SL: We are trying to simplify and streamline consumption of the entire portfolio across CloudBees and Codeship.

Will Codeship be available as a private cloud service, like CloudBees Enterprise Jenkins?

SL: No. Our on-premise customers will keep using CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise.

Will all Codeship staff be joining CloudBees?

MP: Yes. All Codeship employees will be part of the CloudBees team and continue serving our customers, improving our products and helping to ensure a successful integration.

Is the acquisition in any way prompted by increased competition from Atlassian?

SL: No, Atlassian doesn't represent competition at this point in our space but is a key partner in customers deployments thanks to Jira and Bitbucket.

Are more organisations moving from CI/CD to continuous deployment these days? If so how many and how will you support this trend?

SL: For sure and even more traditional enterprises such as banks are starting experimenting with continuous deployment. We expect the surge of Kubernetes to only accelerate that trend and that is something we are following very closely.

How will the acquisition affect DevOps Express?

SL: Getting 14 or so companies all on the same page was difficult. We all have different and numerous demands and getting everyone together proved challenging over time. We decided we were better collaborators than we were organisational founders. The alliance still exists (driven by infostretch) but it is more of an informal alliance now.

The two firms have put out a joint FAQ on the CloudBees site.