14 DevOps vendors link up to simplify enterprise adoption of 'best of breed' tools

DevOps Express initiative aims to streamline the way enterprises transform their software development and delivery processes to DevOps

Just as DevOps seeks to bring together the traditionally separate development and operations functions, so 14 vendors of technology and services designed to assist this process have come together to form a new initiative called DevOps Express.

The idea behind DevOps Express is to streamline the way enterprises transform their software development and delivery environments to embrace DevOps. Its members include software firms, as well as providers of consulting, training and professional services.

The initiative was founded by continuous delivery firm CloudBees and software supply chain automation vendor Sonatype. The remaining members are Atlassian, BlazeMeter, CA Technologies, Chef, DevOps Institute, GitHub, Infostretch, JFrog, Puppet, Sauce Labs, SOASTA and SonarSource.

"DevOps Express is not an offering, per se, it's a multi-vendor initiative aiming at accelerating the adoption of DevOps within enterprises." CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey told Computing.

"Whenever we talk to enterprises, one of the problems they raise is: 'Guide me through the maze of DevOps tools out there and tell me where I should get started'."

Labourey (pictured) says there is a typical stack of tools that is found in almost all DevOps environments, and the initiative seeks to make adoption and integration of these "best of breed" solutions more straightforward.

DevOps Express members will supply reference architectures for integrations of these tools both on-premise and in the cloud, with the aim of improving their interoperability.

Members will also come together as a cross-vendor support network to solve any issues that might arise when the tools are used together; they will also join forces in promotional activities, and in creating articles and best practices related to the combined usage of the tools.

"If a customer has a support contract with several vendors, as part of the initiative we will make sure that issues that are possibly related to multiple tools are handled smoothly by the vendors involved directly, without exposing customers to that complexity," Labourey said.

"It's really great to see all of these leading companies - most of the time very complementary to each other but sometimes in overlap - join forces for the same cause: accelerating and easing the adoption of DevOps," he added.

It's easy to see why CloudBees might be interested in such a relationship. After all, it is pretty much alone as an enterprise purveyor of Jenkins (the open source continuous integration platform), but some members, for example configuration management software providers Chef and Puppet, are direct competitors.

"The products are sufficiently differentiated that customers can then make choices based on specific things they value the most," Labourey insisted. "But at the end of the day, this won't change the rules of the game: we will all still have to constantly provide and demonstrate value to our customers."

Donnie Berkholz, research director for development, DevOps & IT Ops at 451 Research, commented: "Aspiring DevOps organisations encounter significant challenges with integrating a multitude of DevOps-related offerings. By providing an out-of-the-box experience with integrated, battle-tested solutions, the founding members of DevOps Express aim to make it easier for organisations to benefit from the experiences of early adopters."

In our recent DevOps research Computing asked about the top tools and methodologies for implementing a DevOps structure. GitHub, one of the members of DevOps Express, was high on the list of must-have tools, but the surprise leader was Microsoft's IDE Visual Studio.

Download the Computing DevOps Review 2016 to see the full list.