devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Author: Deborah Schalm

  • Fugue Open Sources Fregot to Support Developers Working with the Rego Policy Language

    Frederick, Md. – November 14, 2019 – Fugue, the company empowering engineers to build and operate secure cloud systems that are compliant with enterprise policies, today announced it has open sourced the Fugue Rego Toolkit (Fregot) to enhance the experience working with the Rego policy language. Fregot enables developers to easily evaluate Rego expressions, debug code, and test policies. Rego is part of the Open Policy Agent (OPA) policy engine, which Fugue adopted this year as its policy as code implementation for cloud security and compliance.

    Developed as an alternative to Open Policy Agent’s (OPA) built-in interpreter, Fregot provides error handling that is easy to understand and manage with step-by-step debugging. Additionally, Fregot speeds up the development feedback loop by watching Rego and input files for changes and enabling quick incremental loads. You can use Fregot to validate nearly any kind of JSON or YAML file against Rego policy.

    Fugue created Fregot internally as a lightweight set of tools to enhance the Rego development experience. It provides:

    • Just the Rego language implementation rather than the full OPA agent
    • Useful tools to debug Rego queries and modules
    • Enhanced error messages to aid in correcting Rego expressions
    • Ease of extending and experimenting with new language features

    “Fugue’s SaaS product for cloud infrastructure visibility and security uses Rego and OPA at scale, performing more than 100 million policy evaluations every day and providing our customers with a simple way to create custom policies for cloud infrastructure,” said Josh Stella, co-founder and CTO of Fugue. “We developed Fregot to speed the implementation of these evaluations and provide our customers and the community with useful tools to develop and test policies using the Rego policy language.”

    The Fregot open source project can be found here on Github.

    About Fugue

    Fugue is enterprise cloud security developed for engineers, by engineers. Fugue prevents cloud misconfiguration, ensures continuous compliance with enterprise security policies, and provides full visibility into the security posture of AWS and Azure cloud environments. Fugue automates compliance validation for CIS Foundations Benchmarks, GDPR, HIPAA, ISO 27001, NIST 800-53, PCI, and SOC 2. Customers such as PBS, Sparkpost, SAP NS2, and TrueCar trust Fugue to protect their cloud environments. Fugue’s investors include New Enterprise Associates, Future Fund, and In-Q-Tel (IQT). Fugue is an AWS Advanced Technology Partner and a Launch Partner in the AWS Cloud Management Tools Competency Program in the Governance category. Fugue has twice been named a CyberSecurity Breakthrough Award winner and a Gartner Cool Vendor in Cloud Computing. To learn more, visit www.fugue.co.

     

  • Testim Is First to Expand AI-based Testing to Developers; Previews New Development Kit

    Developers and QA engineers can now fuse the power of AI-based codeless testing with the flexibility of code—for dramatically faster release cycles

     

    SAN FRANCISCO, November 13, 2019 – Testim, the pioneer of codeless AI-based software testing in 2014, disrupts the industry once more with the announcement of the Testim Development Kit, a new way for developers to quickly create resilient tests directly in code. For the first time, developers can enjoy the benefits of AI-based testing while leveraging their preferred Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

    Microsoft, Autodesk, Swisscom, LogMeIn, and others run millions of tests using Testim every month. Now, the Development Kit builds on Testim’s proven AI-based testing capabilities, providing super-fast authoring of trusted, non-flaky tests. Testim’s AI inspects the elements of the application and continuously learns from and improves the robustness of tests.

    Testim’s open approach to testing lets developers and QA engineers write tests their way, in their tools and processes, so they can collaborate freely. Unlike other codeless test automation tools, developers can download their tests as code, eliminating vendor lock-in.

    “The Dev Kit is a key element of our commitment to deliver a compromise-free solution for developers,” said Oren Rubin, founder and CEO of Testim. “The Dev Kit builds on our commitment to make testing more collaborative and open as possible so that teams can deliver quality software faster. Customer feedback has already been exceptional and we’re eager to deliver this Dev Kit to market.”

    Why the Testim Development Kit is so Important

    Modern development teams are beginning to orient workflows around the concept of ‘everything as code,’ or the alignment of every part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) around code or code-like systems. Built with the SDLC in mind, the Testim Development Kit ensures that existing Testim capabilities, like recorded UI interactions, PDF or email validations, as well as new features will be available as API commands. This makes it possible for developers to create and edit robust coded tests and manage them in their version control system next to their application code.

    “One of the things that we love about Testim is that they continue to deliver new innovations to help improve our testing experience,” said Ran Mizrachi, senior software engineering lead at Microsoft. “The Dev Kit will give our team the speed and stability of AI-based codeless tests with the flexibility of code.”

    Part of the movement toward ‘everything as code’ is the emergence of ‘shift-left testing,’ where increasingly, testing is done much earlier in the development lifecycle. For tech teams that are shifting left, the Testim Development Kit gives QA automation engineers an opportunity to better align tests and QA processes with development workflows.

    “The addition of the Development Kit makes Testim the only company to provide developers and QA automation engineers with the complete freedom to work the way they want—in code, in the UI, or some combination of the two,” said Shawn Jaques, director of Product Marketing. “The flexibility this new feature provides has the potential to transform the way development teams test applications, allowing more people to be involved in testing, whether recording codeless tests or writing tests as code in the tools they already know and love.”

    To sign-up for the Development Kit Beta program, please visit https://go.testim.io/testims-new-beta-testim-tdk-testim-development-kit-testautomation

    About Testim

    Founded in late 2014, Testim helps companies accelerate time-to-market, improve software quality and integrates into agile processes. With offices in San Francisco and Tel Aviv, the company is a pioneer in using AI for the authoring, execution, and maintenance of automated tests. Included in the 2019 SD Times 100: ‘Best in Show’ in Software Development for Testing, the Testim platform learns and adapts automated tests to code changes, minimizing maintenance time and makes authoring incredibly fast. Microsoft, Autodesk, Swisscom, LogMeIn, and others run over 10,000,000 tests using Testim every month.

  • Exadel Announces New Office in Germany to Support Growing Local Tech Economy

    Exadel to provide increased digital transformation support and services for local customers 

    WALNUT CREEK, Calif., November 13, 2019 — Exadel (www.exadel.com), a global leader in digital software engineering solutions, today announced it has opened a new office in Germany. The expansion is in response to the increased demand for digital software engineering services in the region and will provide local customers with digital transformation solutions in various modern IT technologies, including blockchain, AI/ML, Big Data and more. Exadel now boasts 20 locations around the globe with 18 in Europe.

    With this additional location, Exadel looks to improve service quality for current customers and offers its breadth of services to new customers in Germany. Exadel already has a stronghold in the region, with a leading German financial institution and top automakers having trusted Exadel’s digital software engineering services. While current and future local customers can take advantage of all of Exadel’s solution offerings, they will be focusing on providing qualified support in digital transformation. Exadel also recently introduced the Innovation Lab by Exadel, designed to help enterprises test emerging technologies like blockchain, AI, mobile, chatbot and machine learning models to determine strategic fit.

    Learn more about the Innovation Lab by Exadel: https://exadel.com/innovation-lab/

    “We are excited to announce this new location in Germany,” said Fima Katz, CEO of Exadel. “It marks a strong year of growth for Exadel and we are looking forward to being at the heart of rapid technological growth in the area. While we have served many German-based clients in our tenure, we realize the importance of developing and maintaining personal connections with customers and will be able to better nurture these relationships through this expansion.”

    Tweet this: .@exadel announces a new office in Germany to support the needs of local technology companies that are innovating rapidly

    About Exadel

    For more than 20 years, Exadel has been developing enterprise and custom software solutions for Fortune 500 clients, including AT&T, Samsung, Bank of America, eBay, and GE. With 20 locations and delivery centers across the US and Europe, Exadel solves the most complex software engineering problems, offering a scalable and skilled mix of onshore and offshore resources at the industry’s most competitive price. Our Digital Software Engineering Solutions (DSES) help chart new digital strategies that are built upon creative thinking, cutting-edge design, and technical innovation. DSES embraces the strengths of diverse global software engineering talent to create and implement strategic, cost-effective services for the new epoch of connected technology.

  • Devo Integrates With Demisto Enterprise to Improve SOC Operations

    Integration Combines Devo’s Context-rich, Real-time Security Analytics with Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) to Deliver Unparalleled Efficiencies in Incident Management

    CAMBRIDGE, Mass., November 12, 2019 — Devo Technology, the data analytics company that unlocks the full value of machine data for the world’s most instrumented enterprises, today announced a product integration with Demisto, a Palo Alto Networks company and leader in security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR). The integration delivers increased visibility and shortened investigation and incident response times.

    By providing a better workflow, Devo and Demisto empower analysts and improve the effectiveness of the Security Operations Center (SOC). Together, Devo and Demisto can speed investigations with rapid correlation and search using Devo’s powerful querying capabilities; leverage hundreds of Demisto third-party product integrations to coordinate responses across security functions; and establish a feedback loop by enriching data in Devo based on the findings of the investigation.

    “The collaboration between Devo and Demisto provides the data and context analysts need to rapidly gain new insights and automate response, addressing one of the critical sources of analyst burnout,” said Julian Waits, GM Cyber at Devo. “Devo’s real-time security analytics, coupled with Demisto, provides analysts with a comprehensive view of the incident lifecycle in a single platform.”

    “Our integration with Devo will help customers consolidate incident data in a single platform, equipping their security teams with rich, correlated data and automatable tasks so they don’t waste time chasing data from disparate sources and performing manual repetitive tasks,” said Rishi Bhargava, Vice President of Product Strategy at Palo Alto Networks.

    Watch the video to see the combined power of the Devo Data Analytics Platform and Demisto Enterprise.

    Demisto Enterprise integrates with hundreds of security products and enables customers to build playbooks for different security processes. These playbooks incorporate a combination of automated tasks and manual best practices to standardize and scale incident response. Demisto’s playbooks help reduce MTTR (mean time to respond) for security incidents and free up time for security teams to conduct deeper investigations. In addition, the case management and machine learning capabilities help security teams maintain incident oversight and improve their security posture over time.

    About Devo

    Devo unlocks the full value of machine data for the world’s most instrumented enterprises, putting more data to work now. Only the Devo data analytics platform addresses both the explosion in volume of machine data and the new, crushing demands of algorithms and automation, enabling IT operations and security teams to realize the full transformational promise of machine data to move the business forward. Devo is a privately held company based in Cambridge, MA and is backed by Insight Partners. Visit www.devo.com to learn more.

  • Sonatype Delivers Premium Open Source Controls to GitHub Users

    New Integrations Deliver Enterprise-Grade Open Source Governance and Dependency Management to Millions of GitHub Developers

    SAN FRANCISCO – GitHub Universe, Nov. 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Sonatype, the company that scales DevOps through open source governance and software supply chain automation, today announced new integrations that strengthen GitHub with premium open source governance and dependency management controls.

    Sonatype has long been the world’s premier provider of open source health and hygiene data and beginning today the company is announcing six new Nexus integrations with GitHub:

    Automatically fix open source issues with trustworthy pull requests from Nexus Lifecycle

    As the use of open source continues to skyrocket, the importance of understanding dependency trees becomes even more crucial to software security and innovation. According to Sonatype’s 2019 State of the Software Supply Chain report, teams that regularly update OSS dependencies deliver higher quality software with 65% fewer vulnerabilities.

    This realization is motivating more and more software engineering teams to seek solutions that can automatically open GitHub pull requests to help developers continuously update dependencies.  The challenge, however, is that automated pull requests are not created equal. Different from the competition, only Sonatype generates automatic pull requests that developers can truly trust.

    “The easy part of dependency management is creating a service that can automatically open a GitHub pull request whenever new versions of dependencies are published,” said Brian Fox, CTO of Sonatype. “The hard part, however, is creating a service that is smart enough to understand in real-time the integrity of new versions before automatically opening a pull request.”

    Sonatype generated pull requests are more intelligent because they’re based on Nexus Intelligence, giving developers confidence that they’re being recommended the best version available and removing friction in their GitHub pipeline.  Nexus Intelligence, which powers Nexus Lifecycle, has analyzed more than 65 million open source components and cataloged over 10 million open source vulnerabilities, creating incredibly accurate OSS data that decreases noise to give developers greater peace of mind when automatically upgrading dependencies.

    Innovate faster with less friction thanks to unrivaled, precise policy enforcement with Nexus for GitHub Actions 

    High velocity DevOps and Continuous Integration practices depend on automation to remain afloat. It’s vital that security is built directly into these pipelines to keep workflows moving and innovation rolling. This velocity makes precision and the highest quality data necessary to identify the best open source to use in software builds. Sonatype’s suite of new integrations with GitHub Actions brings the unique intelligence and power of the Nexus Platform directly to your CI/CD pipeline – making it even easier to develop secure software.

    • Nexus Lifecycle customers can now automatically enforce their policies and view expert remediation guidance directly in GitHub Actions. Sonatypes unparalleled open source data enables developers to know with extreme confidence, if a component is vulnerable without leaving their environment. Nexus now supports 42 programming languages and package formats.
    • Nexus Vulnerability Scanner (NVS) is a free tool that allows you to see what the Sonatype data difference is all about. Add NVS to your GitHub Actions pipeline to find out what’s really in your software and how we use Advanced Binary Fingerprinting to precisely identify components and eliminate false positives/negatives.
    • Nexus Repository (Pro and OSS) now integrates directly into GitHub Actions making your workflow even easier, by bringing your single source of truth for components, binaries, and build artifacts directly into your CI/CD pipeline.
    • Sonatype Nancy – is a free tool that checks for vulnerabilities in your Go (Golang) dependencies, by employing the power of OSS Index. Nancy works for projects that use dep or go modules for dependencies, and now integrates with GitHub Actions.

    Additional Resources:

    About Sonatype

    Sonatype is the leader in software supply chain automation technology with more than 300 employees, over 1,000 enterprise customers, and is trusted by more than 10 million software developers.  Sonatype’s Nexus platform enables DevOps teams and developers to automatically integrate security at every stage of the modern development pipeline by combining in-depth component intelligence with real-time remediation guidance. For more information, please visit Sonatype.com, or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

  • Uploadcare Closes $1.7m In New Funding To Disrupt Content Delivery Market

    Co-Led by Vendep Capital and Runa Capital, Who Previously Invested in NGINX, New Funding Round Includes Acquisition of Blinkloader to Fuel Uploadcare’s Growth Plans and Product Roadmap

    Palo Alto (November 12, 2019) – Uploadcare, an end-to-end cloud platform disrupting the traditional Content Delivery Network (CDN) market through its Bi-Directional technology, announced today that it has secured $1.7 million in new funding. The round is co-led by Runa Capital and Vendep Capital, who will join existing investors Vaizra Capital and LVL1 Group. Proceeds will be used for the acquisition of Blinkloader, a content optimization platform that speeds up content delivery and allows developers to fully comply with new web performance and industry-specific privacy requirements.

    Uploadcare combines adaptive content delivery with high-speed origin services, using AI to optimize files, images, and videos based on each specific end-users’ device, browser, and network connection. Its Bi-Directional CDN technology encompasses the entire content handling lifecycle to accelerate content uploads, reduce traffic costs by 62%, and deliver content nine times faster than traditional CDN platforms. The company’s founders used the experience of building complicated in-house technology systems as a foundation for establishing Uploadcare, which evolved from a web agency that launched over 150 products to market to become a platform that’s creating critical new industry solutions that were previously unavailable.

    Uploadcare will use the new funding to fuel its growth plans to further accelerate content delivery speed and reduce internet traffic volume for enterprises. Through its acquisition of Blinkloader, the company will build upon its mission to streamline the development process and improve time to market by providing a solution that helps ensure all content fully complies with modern web performance standards, ultimately enabling enterprises to focus on their core business, rather than spending time maintaining file infrastructure.

    “In 2016, 44 billion GB of data was created per day and that number is expected to grow to 463 billion GB per day by 2025,” said Igor Debatur, Founder and CEO of Uploadcare. “We built our next-gen technology from the ground up to create an end-to-end solution that goes above and beyond traditional CDN capabilities. By handling the heavy lifting for enterprises, our agile cloud platform enables them to reduce traffic costs and collect content from users worldwide at maximum efficiency and speed. This late stage seed funding allows us to continue developing adaptive CDN technologies that are built with the modern developer in mind to offer a superior user experience at the fastest pace possible. We are proud to have the support of our investors as we work to help enterprises of all sizes unlock the next generation of intelligent content handling at scale. This is a key milestone for Uploadcare, and a true validation of our growth and leadership in the marketplace.”

    With billions of images, videos, documents and other files uploaded and processed each hour, businesses need to ensure their customers that their content is secure, adaptable, and being delivered at the utmost speed. By creating a new standard for content delivery, Uploadcare is able to help a wide range of technology companies including SaaS platforms, online marketplaces, and ecommerce websites cut down their time to market by 80% and increase their ROI by 470%. Over 3800 global customers are currently using Uploadcare as their go-to solution for smart content handling including Mozilla, 2U Inc, L’Oréal, Universe and Prezly, as well as YCombinator-backed companies like Shogun, Openland and Faros.

    “The amount of data that’s created per day is rising at a breakneck rate,” said Dmitry Chikhachev, General Partner at Runa Capital. “With its robust infrastructure of delivery networks that span the globe, Uploadcare has quietly become a go-to solution for developers and engineers at some of the world’s largest companies. With differentiated technology and a strong leadership team, we believe that Uploadcare is well positioned to accelerate its growth and further solidify its leadership in the content delivery market.”

    Uploadcare continues to expand its strategic presence in North America, and recently added a new office location in Vancouver. For more information visit https://uploadcare.com

    ABOUT UPLOADCARE

    Uploadcare is a content delivery platform that optimizes web performance for developers, startups and large enterprises. By combining the world’s most efficient file compression algorithms with AI-based adaptive delivery technology, Uploadcare optimizes visual content for each end-user, delivering content up to 9 times faster than traditional content delivery networks while dramatically reducing traffic costs.

    Uploadcare’s intelligent technology is powered by a team of award-winning engineers, with hundreds of thousands of acceleration nodes deployed across the world. Uploadcare removes the friction of handling terabytes of data, allowing tech companies to keep the focus on their core business through immensely powerful building blocks that deliver content at lightning-fast speeds.

    Over 3800 companies rely on Uploadcare to innovate faster, provide modern web performance and security compliance, reduce internet traffic volume, and delight their customers with secure and instantly loading websites and mobile apps. Uploadcare was founded in 2012 and headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, and Rotterdam, Netherlands. To learn more, visit https://uploadcare.com

  • CockroachDB 19.2 Enables Enterprise to Build Global Applications with Strong Performance

     

    In addition, Cockroach University launches to teach users how to get the most out of CockroachDB

    NEW YORK, November 12, 2019 — Cockroach Labs, the company behind CockroachDB, today announced the release of CockroachDB 19.2, the latest version of the cloud-native, distributed SQL database that is uniquely designed to help enterprises address latencies and optimize performance in geo-distributed settings.

    “We created CockroachDB 19.2 to meet the critical business needs of enterprises that are geographically dispersed and whose transactional workloads demand shorter latencies and improved performance,” said Co-Founder and CEO of Cockroach Labs, Spencer Kimball. “Cockroach Labs is dedicated to giving enterprises a competitive edge so they can focus on what they do best, their business.”

    Today’s businesses use microservices and distributed systems to support modern applications. When moving data across geographies, enterprises struggle to get acceptable performance. Enterprises are under pressure to get consistent performance, regardless of where the request originates. These challenges are often exasperated by faulty data integrity.

    CockroachDB 19.2 extends the capabilities of Cockroach Labs’ first and industry-leading cloud-native database to address these difficult, geo-distributed latency challenges, all the while maintaining strict data correctness. New capabilities include:

     

    • Transaction
    • Latency Decreased — With CockroachDB
    • 19.2, Cockroach Labs is introducing a new and entirely unique capability called “parallel commits” that pushes the bounds on distributed transactions. This capability halves the latencies of all transactions. It empowers enterprises to provide fair support
    • for their global clients and quickly process multiple transactions in real-time.
    • Simpler
    • User Experience for Data Geo-Location —
    • CockroachDB 19.2 builds on CockroachDB’s capabilities that allow enterprises to customize where their data resides geographically, optimizing how it can be accessed and used. CockroachDB 19.2 makes it simpler to create these data location settings, change
    • them, and view them, so businesses can gain a better understanding of configurations and modify them as necessary on the fly.
    • Intelligent
    • Backup and Restore Capabilities
    • — CockroachDB 19.2 knows where data resides and allows organizations to back up locally, ensuring their backups align with the specific compliance requirements for their region and eliminating costly fines.

    Cockroach University 

    Cockroach Labs also announced the launch of Cockroach University to teach users how to take full advantage of CockroachDB. Cockroach University is for developers and architects who want to gain a fundamental understanding of distributed databases and deep knowledge of CockroachDB’s functionality and architecture. The first course, “Getting Started with CockroachDB,” will teach users about the key characteristics of a distributed SQL database, then walk them through how to spin up a CockroachDB instance, run basic queries, and test out CockroachDB’s unique capabilities. The course is divided into three chapters with lessons, tutorials, and quizzes.

    Additional courses including “CockroachDB Developer Fundamentals,” and courses on architecting, administering, and building apps that can fully leverage with CockroachDB will be announced in the coming months. For additional information or to register visit university.cockroachlabs.com.

    About Cockroach Labs

    Cockroach Labs is the company behind CockroachDB, the cloud-native, distributed SQL database that provides next-level consistency, ultra-resilience, data locality, and massive scale to modern cloud applications. Companies like Comcast, Lush, and Bose are building their cloud data architectures on CockroachDB. Cockroach Labs was founded by a team of engineers dedicated to building cutting edge systems infrastructure, and has investments from Altimeter, Benchmark, GV, Index Ventures, and Redpoint. www.cockroachlabs.com

  • Codefresh Launches World’s First CI/CD Live Debugger to Make DevOps Suck Less

    Codefresh will demonstrate its new debugger and other exciting features at Kubecon, November 18 – 21 in Booth #S58

    Mountain View, CA, November 12, 2019 – Creating CI/CD pipelines is often considered a frustrating and time-consuming process. Each change has to be saved, committed and the pipeline rerun from the beginning. DevOps engineers are missing a key component that has been available for software developers for years: debugging breakpoints, so Codefresh is introducing the world’s first live CI/CD debugging tool to take the suck out of DevOps.

    The Codefresh pipeline debugger works similar to an integrated development environment (IDE) debugger. Developers can place breakpoints on one or more pipeline steps and once the pipeline hits one of them, it will pause and a debugging window will open. Users can then test commands, explore the state of the pipeline, and identify required changes.

    “The initial feedback from our users piloting live debugging has been very positive. They love how much faster and easier the CI/CD pipeline creation process is when engineers are able to test, troubleshoot, and fix their pipelines with this new tool,” said Raziel Tabib, Founder and CEO of Codefresh.

    Live debugging will be rolling out to all Codefresh customers on a Pro plan or higher in the coming weeks.

    WHERE:       Kubecon, San Diego Convention Center, 111 W Harbor Dr, San Diego, CA, November 18 – 21

    WHO:           Codefresh, the first and only continuous integration/delivery (CI/CD) platform designed for Kubernetes, will be at Booth #S58

    WHAT:         Tabib will be available to discuss the CI/CD debugging tool as well as other features, including a new filter view on the Builds tab, providing one global view that shows build projects for all projects across an organization, and a project-based view from the setting inside an individual project. In addition, Codefresh now offers native integration with DigitalOcean, the cloud for developing modern apps, making support deployment to the DigitalOcean Kubernetes cluster possible.

    At Kubecon, Codefresh will also be hosting a Cloud Native CI/CD Summit with Microsoft on Monday, November 18 from 12 noon – 6 p.m. on the historic Berkeley Ferryboat at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. “KuBEERnetes.” Happy hour starts at 5 p.m. during which Codefresh will make major announcements that impact the open source community.

    Codefresh’s CI/CD platform provides automation for building, testing and deploying modern applications using Kubernetes, serverless and more. Development teams often see 24x faster engineering cycles when using Codefresh. The company recently announced 340% YoY growth.

    About Codefresh, Inc.
    Founded in 2014, Codefresh is the first Kubernetes-native CI/CD. After launch in 2017, Codefresh has gained tens of thousands of users. Unlike legacy solutions, Codefresh pipelines are uniquely designed for cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes and Helm. Codefresh is headquartered in Mountain View, CA and backed by world-class investors: M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, Viola Ventures, Vertex Ventures, Hillsven, CEIIF, UpWest Labs and Streamlined Ventures. Learn more about Codefresh at https://codefresh.io/. Follow on LinkedIn and Twitter at @codefresh.

     

     

  • ZenHub Roadmaps Bridges Developers and Business Stakeholders on Critical Software Projects with Complete Visibility and Alignment

    First Project Roadmapping Solution Within GitHub

    VANCOUVER, British Columbia – November 7, 2019 – ZenHub, the most popular project management tool among teams using GitHub, today announced ZenHub Roadmaps, a comprehensive road mapping solution that drives alignment on critical business initiatives between software development teams and business stakeholders. The new product fully resides within GitHub and is the first to provide real-time visibility into key projects based on code updates. With it, users can visually assess the progress of software development work being done and track it against completion goals while engaging in decisions to ensure meeting delivery schedules.

    ZenHub Roadmaps is the first roadmapping solution to use live GitHub Issue data and Pull Request activity for lockstep monitoring and decision-making. Rather than a separate tool or shared spreadsheet used as a project planning document, ZenHub Roadmaps is an integral part of the ZenHub collaboration platform adding a new view specifically for establishing and managing roadmaps. It is the most substantial from-the-ground-up advancement to the ZenHub project management platform for agile development ever released.

    “Software is becoming more and more critical to the success and longevity of every company. We’re seeing even the most traditional organizations placing bets on software as the future of their business,” said Aaron Upright, ZenHub executive and co-founder. “At the same time there has been a considerable gap between the engineering team’s progress and key stakeholder’s understanding of that progress. ZenHub Roadmaps brings the two worlds together in an easy, intuitive way based on the real work of software development.”

    A staggering 70% of “complex, large-scale change programs don’t reach their stated goals,” according to McKinsey & Company. A ZenHub survey of developers found that 60% of respondents admitted that roadmapping for software projects was substantially broken. Often roadmaps are plagued by inaccuracies due to complexity or who has access. Inaccuracies have a cascading effect, so that even small mistakes may cause significant delays or problems. Software projects commonly slip in schedule or get off track in their deliverables through communication gaps, lack of accurate tracking based on real development work and even a lack of trust between developers and management. While the business relies on new software to empower or enact particular initiatives and achieve plans, many of these projects fail to meet the necessary delivery schedules and value to the user.

    Even more important than the ability to track progress is the new capability ZenHub Roadmaps brings to keep projects on track and immediately address issues—such as the need for additional team resources—or make decisions—such as reducing scope or features—to meet important business milestones. ZenHub Roadmaps enables on-time delivery for critical projects. It also saves developers considerable time by providing a natural extension of the ZenHub platform without requiring the pivoting between multiple disparate tools and without leaving the GitHub development environment. Developers also see the impact and importance of their work by having a “big picture” view of a project and its importance. ZenHub Roadmaps provides developers with a critical layer of context around how what they’re building contributes to the business’s goals and objectives. As a result, developers are more engaged and aligned with the goals of the business rather than feeling siloed in their work.

    ZenHub Roadmaps provides an adjustable, meaningful view of software development projects starting with a comprehensive overview down to clickable components for specific deliverables. Individual teams can track their progress on a weekly or monthly basis, clicking into epics in order to get a more granular view of Issues and Pull Request blocking progress. At the same time, executives and other stakeholders can get a quarterly view of important projects and initiatives so to form a clear picture of how the team is progressing and whether adjustments need to be made or additional resources need to be deployed. Changing project parameters or adjusting timelines automatically updates completion dates with visual and quantifiable indicators of progress.

    As with other aspects of ZenHub, ZenHub Roadmaps is accessible on both web and mobile browsers and as of today it is available for all current customers and users.

    About ZenHub

    ZenHub helps development teams build better software faster. Over 150,000 developers, product owners, and project managers in organizations ranging from disruptive startups to global enterprises have leveraged ZenHub to improve their Software Development Lifecycle and deliver value to their customers. For more information, visit http://www.zenhub.com.

  • Redgate boosts team productivity in its SQL coding and formatting tool, SQL Prompt

    Cambridge UK, Tuesday, 7 November 2019– To help developers increase the speed and quality of their SQL coding, enhance efficiency, and take advantage of the latest improvements in SQL Server, Redgate has released a major upgrade for its most popular tool, SQL Prompt.

    Many individual developers and an increasing number of teams have already discovered the value of SQL Prompt, both as a coding productivity tool and as a way to encourage collaboration in DevOps. Rather than having to work out the correct syntax the hard way, SQL Prompt autocompletes code in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) and Visual Studio, and takes care of formatting. It also encourages teams to implement and share good SQL coding standards and practices, and promotes code reuse, improving the quality of the code that reaches production systems

    A new ranking algorithm in SQL Prompt v10 makes the code completion feature even smarter. As developers type code, it now gives them the most likely autocomplete suggestions first, based on what code has already been typed, and suggestions that have been used previously.

    Early feedback has already been very favorable. As Piotr Lipski, Business Intelligence Consultant at Bearing Point, comments: “After enabling the ranked option, I am getting the right thing on the very top of the IntelliSense list almost every time. Not sure what voodoo your developers put behind this but it saves me a lot of scrolling and clicking.”

    To improve the quality of coding, another new feature in SQL Prompt also auto-fixes errors in code. As users write code, SQL Prompt runs static code analysis in the background, checking the code for compliance with its built-in set of rules, and highlighting potential code issues and pitfalls. For rules where code simply needs to be corrected, SQL Prompt will auto-fix the code and remove the issue.

    This is especially useful when reviewing legacy code that needs to be brought up to standard. By cutting the time required to deal with trivial issues, it allows teams to focus on the more serious ones which might cause performance, reliability or instability problems.

    And in response to user feedback, two of the most popular requests have been addressed by enhancing the tab history feature in the SSMS version of SQL Prompt. Many developers have multiple tabs open in SSMS, particularly when they are resolving complex problems. The feature already lets users save, preview, rename and restore tabs. It now allows tabs that contain code that is needed often to be bookmarked, and groups tabs by date to make them easier to find.

    Finally, any tool that strives to help teams adopt SQL standards and current best practices can only do so if it adapts continually to support advances in the underlying database platform, SQL Server. SQL Prompt 10 supports all of the significant T-SQL enhancements introduced in SQL Server 2019, the release of which was announced at Microsoft Ignite on 4 November. Users can now, for example, assign data sensitivity classifications to their columns using the new ADD SENSITIVITY CLASSIFICATION command.

    Existing users of SQL Prompt can start using the new functionality immediately by updating to the latest version using the Check for Updates link in the Help menu. New users can explore the feature by downloading a fully-functional trial version of the software from the Redgate website. Once installed, SQL Prompt will appear in the standard menu of SSMS or Visual Studio and can be used just like any other feature of the IDE.