It’s been happening for a while. There’s been a trend in the continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), and release automation (RA) world: DevOps tools merging into a unified platform. CI companies such as JFrog and CloudBees have acquired CDRA companies like Shippable and Electric Cloud. CD companies such as Harness are buying CI tools like Drone.io.
It’s obvious that solutions that merge continuous integration, continuous delivery, and release automation are valuable. Enterprises are eager to adopt them — they’d rather have a cohesive tool that they can run out of the box than assemble things themselves with scripts-and-glue code.
These Aren’t Traditional SDLC Tools
These merged, cohesive tools differ from traditional software development lifecycle (SDLC) tools because they provide modern composability. Yes, they work out of the box, but if you want to use a different static code scanner, or you need additional governance guardrails that are unique to your industry, you can just plug them in, and they operate seamlessly.
The best of these tools also provide development metrics and reliability metrics and target more than just DevOps — they’re looking to improve the entire value stream, including developer experience, developer productivity, and uptime.
Naming Things Is The Trickiest Problem
This category is a growing market, but Forrester’s name for it — integrated software delivery platforms (ISDPs) — is certainly a mouthful. These days, it appears that some of the larger players are coalescing around the term “unified DevOps platform.” Sometimes they’ll throw an “enterprise” in there, as well, since enterprises are the ones that benefit the most. No matter the name, this area is certainly worth tracking.
Watch this space, as Chris Condo and I will be working together in this market to keep track of the big players, innovative features, and best practices. Regardless of the name, enterprises want DevOps solutions that run straight out of the box but also let them substitute tooling when it’s appropriate.
