Whether it’s the breakneck pace of innovation, including AI and how it is changing our day-to-day, the shifting regulatory landscape, or simply the challenge of keeping teams connected in a world that’s still figuring out hybrid everything, we truly are living at a historic juncture. In the spirit of the season, I want to reflect on what I’m thankful for in DevOps this year — not just as Shimmy the founder and editor, but as Alan the community member, fellow traveler and eternal optimist. Because for all the drama and disruption, there’s still so much to appreciate.
1. The AI (R)evolution Hits DevOps — And We Dove In
Like everyone else, DevOps couldn’t escape the gravitational pull of generative AI and machine learning (and let’s not forget agentic AI). But instead of shying away, our community embraced it — experimenting with AI-driven code review, smarter testing tools, automated documentation, and even “prompt engineering” as a new craft. I’m grateful for the way we didn’t treat AI as a threat but as an opportunity, driving innovation from chaos and charting new paths for collaboration between humans and machines. On a personal note, I’ve seen so many practitioners leap from fear to curiosity to mastery, sharing lessons learned and building open tools for all. That’s classic DevOps spirit.
2. Security Finally Gets a Seat at the Table — For Real
It’s been a long journey, but this year, DevSecOps matured from buzzword to baseline. High-profile breaches and an ever-expanding attack surface forced organizations to move beyond compliance checklists and into true security-by-design. From SBOMs (software bill of materials) becoming table stakes to greater investment in secure supply chains, I’m thankful we’re not just talking the talk anymore. As a community, we’re shifting left, right, and center to build safer pipelines, and that benefits everyone. Personally, it’s rewarding to see the security conversations I’ve championed for years finally become front and center. I’m not saying we solved security, mind you, but it is getting the attention it deserves.
3. Remote, Hybrid and Flexible Work Are Here to Stay — And So is Culture
Remember the scramble to go remote? Now, we’re refining it. I’m grateful for the creative, resilient ways our community has adapted. From asynchronous communication practices to dynamic incident response rituals, we’ve managed to sustain (and sometimes strengthen) open, blameless cultures in a distributed world. That’s no small feat. For me, it’s a joy to see companies invest in “DevOps Days” both online and in-person, and to watch global teams swap wisdom across Slack, Discord, and even just plain Zoom. Communication is key to DevOps, and we are better at it than ever.
4. Platform Engineering and Internal Developer Platforms Find Their Groov
If you’d told me a few years ago that “platform engineering” would become one of the hottest job titles in DevOps, I’d have raised an eyebrow. Even more, after the “DevOps is dead marketing nonsense, thinking of platform engineering as part of the tribe was not on my bingo card. But here we are, and I’m thankful for the thoughtful focus on developer experience, self-service and scalable enablement. Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) aren’t just tech — they’re a cultural movement to reduce toil and friction, helping teams spend more time delivering value. I’ve heard from countless engineers who say, “I just want to build,” and that’s music to my ears.
5. The DevOps Community: Stronger, Louder, More Inclusive
This one never changes, but it’s truer than ever. I’m grateful for an ecosystem that’s fiercely inclusive, open to newcomers, and unafraid to challenge the status quo. From meetups and open source initiatives to hard conversations about burnout and diversity, our community has shown up for each other. devopsy.kinsta.cloud hosted stories this year from underrepresented voices, from junior DevOps pros to industry legends reinventing themselves. That diversity of thought is DevOps’ secret weapon—and my personal inspiration. This, coming from a Johnny-come-lately to the DevOps world just 13 or so years ago.
Lest you think it’s all Unicorns and rainbows, let’s be real: This year hasn’t been without its struggles.
1. The Ongoing Talent Crunch, Layoffs and Burnout Epidemic
Demand for DevOps talent is hotter than ever, but supply — not so much. The result? Overworked teams, slower delivery, and a rising tide of burnout. I’m not thankful for the stress, the 2 a.m. incident calls, or the attrition I’ve witnessed. We need to invest more in mentorship, training and sustainable practices. I am also stressed about the frequent requests I get on LinkedIn from friends and colleagues who have been part of the massive layoffs in our industry. I wish I could help each one of you find your next job, but jobs are hard to come by today.
2. Tool Sprawl: More Tools, Less Flow
We love tools, but this year the ecosystem seemed to explode — again. Developers and operators alike are struggling to juggle ever-expanding toolchains, integrations, and dashboards. Instead of “you build it, you run it,” too often it was “you integrate it, you curse it.” We need a renaissance of simplicity and focus, or risk losing sight of what matters: delivering value.
3. Security Theater and Compliance-Driven Thinking
Yes, I’m grateful for security’s rise — but not when it’s all checkbox compliance and theater. Some organizations still treat DevSecOps as a patch to be applied rather than a mindset to be embraced. When regulation is the only motivator, we risk building brittle, reactive defenses rather than proactive, resilient systems. We can — and must — do better.
Looking back, it’s clear: We have a lot more to be grateful for than to be upset about. The future of DevOps is brimming with promise. AI and automation, when guided by our values, will supercharge human creativity — not replace it. Our focus on security, culture and experience will pay long-term dividends. And the beating heart of DevOps — this irrepressible community — remains strong, curious and generous.
As we head into the holiday season, I’m filled with excitement. There are new technologies to explore, new voices to hear, and new challenges to tackle together. I believe the best days of DevOps are ahead of us.
To all our devopsy.kinsta.cloud readers, contributors, skeptics and champions: From the bottom of my heart, I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving and a joyful holiday season. What I’m most grateful for, every single year, is your continued support, engagement and passion for making DevOps (and the world) just a little bit better.
Onward.
My friends, I’ve been around long enough in the world of DevOps, cybersecurity and cloud-native to see the “next big thing” fade into “just another dashboard.” But today I’m here to tell you: observability isn’t just another tool—it might very well be the killer app of our era.
Remember when “monitoring” meant metrics and logs siloed in Excel-spreadsheets or vendor dashboards? We worried about a thousand things: CPU spikes, missing logs, latency creeping up. Then came APM (application performance monitoring) which promised to tie everything together. But APM had limits—focused often on the application layer, but weak at systems scale, tracing across microservices, and dealing with the explosion of telemetry from cloud-native and containerized environments.
Now fast forward: we’re seeing sweeping moves in the marketplace that tell me one thing—observability has entered maturity, and not just as a tool, but as a market-creating platform. Case in point: Palo Alto Networks’ announced acquisition of Chronosphere for $3.35 billion. That’s right—observability startup at >$160 m ARR being bought for over 20 times revenue. The message is loud: the architecture of visibility is now mission-critical.
Meanwhile, the open-source engine driving this revolution—OpenTelemetry (OTel)—has gone from “nice to have” to “must-have.” It’s the vendor-agnostic, instrumentation-unifier that helps flatten the visibility curve. And across the CNCF and cloud-native gatherings like KubeCon, you can see the drumbeat: telemetry everywhere, pipelines everywhere, convergence of infrastructure, apps, AI and security.
So why do I boldly call observability the killer app? Let me unpack that in three bullet-points:
OpenTelemetry didn’t allow vendors to lock you into single-vendor instrumentation. It brought metrics, logs, traces into a common schema. Engineers love it, vendors grudgingly support it—but one thing is certain: it tilts power away from proprietary silos. When you standardize the foundation of telemetry, you unlock data use-cases that were previously prohibitively expensive or too complex.
Look, I was there when SIEM (security event and information management) was hyped. “We’ll have full enterprise-visibility, correlate logs from networks, endpoints, cloud workloads, integrate with threat intelligence…” Sound familiar? Except reality hit: scalability, cost-explosion, and complex deployment killed many promises. Observability—by virtue of being built for cloud-native scale, real-time pipelines, cross-domain data—now fills that hole. It’s not just performance monitoring—it’s contextual, correlated visibility across apps, infra, security.
APM said: “We’ll tell you what’s wrong with your service.” But the new observability model says: “We’ll tell you why, and we’ll show you how, and in some cases we’ll do it autonomously.” As one industry veteran put it: “While APM focuses on identifying what’s wrong within a specific service or set of services, observability helps you understand why by connecting signals across your entire environment using AI and machine learning.” The shift is significant: from siloed toolsets to platform-scale telemetry, analytics, incident response and remediation.
Here’s where I get a little blunt: everyone’s talking AI. ChatGPT this, generative-AI that, agentic bots everywhere. And yes—AI is huge. But you know what? Observability is quietly behind that explosion. AI workloads are data hungry. They’re distributed, they’re containerized, they spin up inference engines, microservices, pipelines. Without observability you don’t know what the AI is doing, when it fails, or how it can be secured. Indeed, check the speculation on the Chronosphere deal: Palo Alto says the purchase is about AI-era telemetry and handling massive data demands. So while AI’s hogging the spotlight, observability is the foundational infrastructure making AI reliable, auditable, secure—and ripe for being the next platform wave.
Okay, so observability is big. But it’s not done. We’re headed into a fresh phase where observability + agentic AI (software agents that act, not just detect) will disrupt the market again. Imagine a platform not just telling you “There’s a latency spike in service-X and logs show error-Y,” but autonomously instrumenting the trace, triaging the root cause, correlating with breach attempts, remediating via a security workflow—all in one loop. That’s the future some forward vendors are chasing. And the legacy vendors? They should be looking over their shoulder, nervous. Because the next wave isn’t just monitoring—it’s autonomous, cross-domain, secure visibility.
If you’re reading this, you are part of the winning side. The practitioner side. The engineer, the architect, the SRE, DevOps leader. Because what this means for you: better insights, more control, less firefighting. Better security posture, faster business-outcomes, less “we didn’t know what happened” disconnect. The tools are evolving, the platforms are rising. The data is unlocked. And the value shifts toward you and your team.
So yes—observability is the real killer app. It’s the plumbing, the platform, the lens, the watchdog and the autopilot of the cloud-native, AI-driven era. We’ll keep hearing “AI this” and “agent that,” but don’t lose sight of the foundation: visibility, telemetry, instrumentation, correlation—and now action. When the dust settles, the winners will be those who see and act faster, with more context and less chaos. And that, my friends, is just what Dr. Shimmy ordered.
I was down in Brooklyn this week attending AI Native DevCon, and let me tell you—there’s no hidden metaphor or clever subtext in that name. What GuyPo and the gang have built here is exactly what it says on the tin: a community and a movement laser-focused on using AI natively in software development. Not bolted on, not duct-taped to the side, but woven into the core machinery of how we build, ship, secure, operate, and iterate on software.
And yes, while the name emphasizes “Dev,” I’m going to go on record right now and say that Ops is absolutely part of this story. You can’t decouple the two—not in 2025, not in AI’s era, not ever.
But before we get into that, let me set the scene.
This was my first time at Industry City, and even though the temperatures outside were flirting with frostbite levels, inside the venue was on fire. There were pockets of people huddled in every corner—debating agent architectures, arguing about LLM approval chains, sketching out platform patterns on napkins, riffing on the best ways to embed guardrails directly into CI/CD.
This wasn’t performative energy.
It wasn’t the manic buzz of a marketing-heavy conference.
This was the same authentic vitality I remember seeing in places like Austin, Boulder, and even early-days Silicon Valley—before the VC decks and the “influencers” showed up.
This—this—was Brooklyn.
Not Brooklyn-as-Manhattan’s-Little-Brother.
Brooklyn as a fully independent, wildly creative organism.
A perfect venue for a movement built by tinkerers, hackers, platform thinkers, and people who love doing the work.
No shade to Manhattan, but this event simply couldn’t have happened there. You can feel that.
And maybe that’s why, walking into the event, I had that odd déjà vu sensation. Because everything about AI Native DevCon felt familiar. Is the community building around this movement? It looks a whole lot like the early-days DevOps tribe.
No less than Patrick Debois—the Godfather of DevOps himself—is involved. When Patrick shows up, you know something real is happening. His presence is like a community seal of authenticity: no hype, no hand-waving, no empty promises. Just curiosity, experimentation, and progress.
At the center of the organizing force is Guy “GuyPo” Podjarny, co-founder of Snyk and now the driver behind Tessl, his new AI-native platform endeavor. GuyPo has always had that rare intersection of hands-on technical depth and community-first DNA, and it shows here. This thing has roots.
Joining him is Simon Maple, another Snyk alum and someone I’ve watched build trust across developer audiences for years. Seeing these two at the helm gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling—and not just because I’ve known them forever.
It told me security has a seat at this table from day one.
Not bolted on.
Not a compliance afterthought.
Not a “phase two” for later.
Baked in.
That alone makes this different from so many tech “movements” that come and go.
The speakers’ lineup is chock full of familiar names and faces. These are people I respect. A great lineup of many folks who literally came from all over the world.
Over 300 people showed up for this two-day gathering, and they were exactly who you’d hope would appear at an event like this:
What you didn’t see?
The hordes of opportunists who show up once there’s money to chase.
It’s still early.
It’s still pure.
It’s still about learning and doing, not monetizing and packaging.
And that, for a movement like this, is priceless.
One stat that I heard during the event and have heard frequently elsewhere: 90% of developers already use AI in some capacity.
If you talk to dev teams across organizations—from scrappy startups to the Fortune 500—you’ll see that’s dead on. AI is everywhere. It’s in code review, test generation, documentation, build optimization, workflow stitching, data cleanup, and the day-to-day mechanics of actual work. It’s everywhere.
But the usage is fragmented.
Inconsistent.
Full of “rogue patterns” (more on that in a second).
Mostly happening at the individual level rather than as part of a coordinated engineering strategy.
That’s why this community matters.
AI Native Dev isn’t about using AI as a tool.
It’s about building software with AI as a first-class participant in the SDLC. It’s about a future where agentic AI is a bulwark for development and deployment.
Looking through the agenda at AINativeDev.io/DevCon, I was struck by how practical the content was. A few standout areas:
How do you design agents that collaborate rather than collide?
How do you chain them responsibly?
Not the dry governance of checkbox frameworks—but living governance encoded into platform seams.
How to embed guardrails directly where developers work.
This one was a crowd favorite.
Imagine incident triage with LLM copilots that actually understand your stack.
Finally—FINALLY—the platform engineering conversation moves into AI.
These weren’t “AI is coming” talks.
These were “AI is here and here’s how we’re using it to ship real things” talks.
Simon Maple delivered one of the most grounded explanations of secure AI usage I’ve heard yet:
“The path to using AI securely in dev and DevOps starts with platform-level best practices — the guardrails, policies, and context we bake directly into the environment. Platform teams will distribute these across developer spaces, helping rein in some of the ‘cowboy’ approaches we’re seeing in vibe coding today. At their core, these controls are about LLM guidance: giving agents the right context for how we build, not dictating what we build.”
Bang.
Spot on.
We’re not here to limit developers.
We’re here to steer the AI they use so they can build better, faster, safer.
Walking around Industry City that day—listening to people, watching them sketch, argue, debate, laugh—I had a moment where I honestly felt transported.
I saw the early DevOps days flash before my eyes.
I saw the scrappy invention.
The community-first attitude.
The shameless geekiness.
The sense of “we’re onto something, but we’re still figuring out what.”
And then, just as quickly, I felt something else:
The future.
It reminded me of what Jon Landau said all those years ago in Harvard Square after watching a then-unknown Bruce Springsteen perform:
“I saw the future of rock ’n’ roll and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”
Well, I saw the future this week too.
I saw DevOps’ future — and its name is AI Native Dev.
Balaji Raghavan, chief technology officer at Postman, breaks down key findings from the company’s 7th Annual State of the API Report — offering an inside look at how APIs are reshaping software development and DevOps practices worldwide.
Raghavan notes that APIs have evolved from tactical integration tools into strategic enablers of digital transformation. According to the report, nearly every software organization now relies on APIs to connect distributed systems, streamline development, and accelerate product delivery. What’s changing, he explains, is the scale and complexity of API ecosystems — and how DevOps teams are adapting to manage them securely and efficiently.
They highlight several trends emerging from the survey: the rise of API-first development, the growing importance of governance and lifecycle management, and the increasing use of AI to design, test, and monitor APIs. For DevOps teams, this means embedding API observability and automation directly into their pipelines to improve performance and reliability.
Raghavan also discussed how teams are addressing the challenges of security, version control, and dependency sprawl as APIs become more interconnected across multi-cloud environments. He stressed that visibility and collaboration remain key — developers, platform engineers, and security teams must work from a shared source of truth to keep up with the pace of API-driven innovation.
Ultimately, the report’s message is clear: APIs are no longer supporting players in the DevOps ecosystem — they’re the backbone of modern software delivery. The organizations that invest in automation, governance, and developer experience will be the ones that thrive as API complexity continues to grow.
David Yanacek, Sr. Principal Engineer, AWS Agentic AI, dives into the rise of vibe coding versus traditional spec-driven development. As generative AI continues to transform how code is created, developers are moving faster than ever, but not always with the same level of structure, review, or intent that defined earlier software engineering practices.
Yanacek explains that vibe coding—writing code by “feel” with the help of large language models and AI copilots—has opened the door to rapid prototyping and experimentation. However, it also raises new questions around reliability, reproducibility, and long-term maintainability. Without clearly defined specifications and governance, teams risk introducing technical debt and vulnerabilities at a scale that traditional code review processes were never designed to handle.
By contrast, spec-driven development enforces design discipline and predictable outcomes, but it can feel slow and rigid in fast-moving environments. The challenge, Yanacek notes, is to strike a balance between the agility of AI-assisted creativity and the rigor of structured engineering. That means applying DevOps principles, such as automation, observability, and feedback loops, not just to deployment, but to the AI-assisted coding process itself.
Yanacek also highlights the evolving role of developers and security engineers as AI becomes embedded in the software lifecycle. In his view, the organizations that succeed will be those that treat AI as a collaborator rather than a crutch, leveraging it to scale quality, not just speed.
Innovation is accelerating, but without structure and security, that speed could come at the expense of trust and control.
Every year, the DevOps Dozen tells a story about where our industry is headed. When we look at the finalists, we see innovators who lift communities, teams that turn practice into outcomes, and stronger tools that help us build, run and secure software at scale.
Our Community Awards finalists are the voices and contributors who lead, mentor, and turn new ideas into real progress for the DevOps community. The Tools & Services Awards finalists are the tools and platforms that delivered real value in day-to-day software delivery, security, and operations throughout 2025.
Without further ado, here are the DevOps Dozen 2025 Finalists:
Top DevOps Community Evangelist
Most Innovative DevOps Open Source Project
DevOps Enterprise Leader of the Year
Best devopsy.kinsta.cloud Article of the Year
Best DevOps-Related Video or Audio Podcast
Best DevOps Survey/Research/Report
Best DevOps Event of the Year
Best DevOps Book of the Year
Best Application of AI in Enterprise DevOps Practices
Best Application of Generative AI in a DevOps Tool/Platform
Best New DevOps Tool
Best DevOps for DataOps/Database Solution
Best DevOps for Mainframe Solution
Best Testing Service/Tool
Best Platform Engineering Solution
Best DevSecOps Solution
Best Observability Solution
Best Supply Chain Security Solution
Top DevOps Vendor Evangelist
Best Application of Agentic AI in a DevOps Tool/Platform
Best End-to-End DevOps Platform
DevOps Industry Leader of the Year
Best DevOps Industry Implementation
DevOps has never been only about tools. Progress happens when people, processes, and platforms line up and reinforce each other. A community evangelist who brings practitioners together can change how an organization builds and runs software. A platform that reduces friction can free teams to focus on solving real business problems. A stronger approach to supply chain security can raise the standard for every release that follows.
That is the common thread across this year’s finalists. They represent meaningful, practical progress in how we design, deliver, and secure software at scale.
Congratulations to all the DevOps Dozen 2025 finalists. Thank you for the work you do for this community and for the broader industry.
With the finalists in place, it is now up to the community and our judges to decide the winners.
To support the people, projects and vendors you believe had the biggest impact this year, head over to the DevOps Dozen Awards website and cast your vote.
Winners will be announced at the Predict 2026 Virtual Summit on January 15, 2026, and will receive both digital badges and physical trophies celebrating their achievements.
Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to support the DevOps Dozen Awards by nominating candidates and voting. Good luck to all the finalists!