devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Author: Jules Louis

  • New DevOps Research From Sonatype Reveals Changing Attitudes Toward Application Security

    Fulton, MD – March 21, 2017 – Sonatype, the leader in software supply chain automation, today announced the results of its 2017 DevSecOps Community Survey.  2,292 IT professionals participated in the online survey conducted in February 2017. The survey revealed that mature development organizations ensure automated security is woven into their DevOps practice, early, everywhere, and at scale. Analysis of responses also found that IT organizations continue to struggle with breaches as nearly a 50% increase was recorded between Sonatype’s 2014 and 2017 survey.

    The adoption of DevOps around the world is evidenced by 67% of survey respondents describing their practices as very mature or of improving maturity. Where traditional development and operations teams see security teams and policies slowing them down (47%), DevOps teams have discovered new ways to integrate security at the speed of development. Only 28% of mature DevOps teams believe they are being slowed by security requirements.

    Other key findings from the survey include:

    Development plays an active, early role in application security

    • Developers are taking more responsibility for security with 24% of all respondents saying it’s a top concern while in mature DevOps organizations that number rises to 38%.
    • 58% of mature DevOps teams have automated security as part of Continuous Integration (CI) practices compared to 39% of all survey participants.

    For DevOps teams, security controls are increasingly automated throughout the development lifecycle

    • 42% of mature DevOps organizations perform application security analysis at every stage of the software delivery lifecycle (SDLC). This number shrinks to just 27% when all survey respondents are counted.

    Automated security practices allow developers to keep pace with the speed and scale of innovation

    • 88% of survey respondents indicated that security was a top concern when deploying containers, yet only 53% leverage security solutions to address this problem.
    • 35% of organizations keep a complete software bill of materials to help them track down new open source vulnerabilities faster (e.g., Commons-Collection, Struts2).
    • 85% of those surveyed from highly mature DevOps practices received some form of application security training, ensuring awareness of secure coding practices. In immature DevOps practices, 30% received no training.

    “As evidenced by this year’s survey results, organizations everywhere are now transforming their development from waterfall-native to DevOps-native tools and processes,” said Wayne Jackson, CEO, Sonatype. “Along the way, they are coming to grips with one simple fact: DevOps is not an excuse to do application security poorly; rather it is an opportunity to do application security better than ever.”

     

     

     

    — Jules Louis

  • Vector Software Adds Configuration-Based Test Cases to its VectorCAST Test Automation Platform

    Providence, RI USA – 3/16/2017 – Vector Software, the world’s leading provider of innovative software solutions for embedded software quality, announced today new configuration-based testing capabilities for VectorCAST test automation tools. VectorCAST is designed to make testing easier and faster, and configuration-based test cases add the ability to efficiently test software that is intended to be run in multiple configurations.

    A common practice is to combine multiple software configurations into a single code module. For example, a collision detection code module could have configuration variants for two or more embedded electronic control units. The software is built using different build configuration settings to generate the software variant for each electronic control unit. Testing the variant code presents a problem as the expected behavior is dependent on the specific variant under test. Configuration-based test cases resolve this by selecting the test cases that are specific to the configuration. These specialized test cases will only be run in the specific configuration they were defined for.

    VectorCAST currently includes features including coverage on original source and Change-Based Testing that make the testing process easier and faster. Adding configuration-based test cases to the existing VectorCAST features further optimizes testing single-source software variants.

    “Configuration-based test cases allow multiple configurations of single-source software to be efficiently tested, saving developers a significant amount of time,” said Jeffrey Fortin, head of product management at Vector Software.

    Attendees of Embedded World 2017 can view a live demonstration of configuration-based test cases (specialized tests) at the Vector Software booth in Hall 4, Stand 4-241 at the Nuremberg Exhibition Center from March 14-16, 2017. For an image of VectorCAST configuration-based test cases, click here.

    — Jules Louis

  • Quali’s Survey Offers Insights about IT Challenges in Cloud and DevOps

    SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 15, 2017 — Quali, the leader in cloud sandbox software for cloud and DevOps automation, has released new survey findings detailing the challenges that IT professionals face as they pursue adoption of DevOps practices.

    More than 2,000 IT industry executives took the Quali survey online and at tech industry events during 2016, including Cisco Live, VMWorld, DevOps Summit, AWS re:Invent, Delivery of Things and Jenkins World. The survey was executed in the United States with respondents drawn from engineering, managerial, architect and C-level roles.

    “Despite the immense popularity of DevOps today, EMA research data shows a general lack of central governance and automation when it comes to creating new application environments. This leads to pockets of developers using their favorite, often not well integrated, DevOps tools. To clean up this mess, we need a template or blueprint-driven approach with one central management platform or point of access, assuring consistency of deployed application environments, from the app server and backend data to the load testing software,” said Torsten Volk, Managing Research Director, Hybrid Cloud & Infrastructure Management, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

    Here are the high-level findings from Quali’s DevOps survey results:

    • Fully 54% of respondents indicated they had no access to self-service infrastructure. This meant that more than half of respondents took a ticket-based approach to infrastructure delivery, impacting productivity and increasing time to market.
    • Of those surveyed, only 23% said infrastructure can be delivered in less than one day. Most respondents said DevOps still takes more than one week to deliver infrastructure, with 44% saying it takes up to one month or more to deliver infrastructure. Lack of access to the right infrastructure and environment slows application delivery.
    • DevOps managers are deploying multiple tools to support their DevOps efforts. The current DevOps toolchain ecosystem is quite fragmented with a mixture of open source and packaged offerings. The most popular tools cited by respondents included Jenkins (21%), Docker (16%), Puppet (14%) and Chef (13%).
    • Top barriers to DevOps success included the respondent’s company culture (14%); challenges of testing automation (13%); legacy systems (12%); application complexity (11%); and budget constraints (11%). Other barriers to achieving DevOps included limited IT skills; difficulty managing multiple environments; a lack of DevOps plans and tools; and a lack of executive buy-in.
    • Respondents varied widely on the number of applications they now run in hybrid cloud environments. On average, of those adopting hybrid clouds, the respondents run only 23% of their apps on a hybrid cloud platform, with 65% of respondents running less than 24 applications in hybrid environments and only 8% running more than 75 applications. This can largely be attributed to the complexities of a hybrid IT environment, as several enterprises favor hybrid clouds.
    • Respondents are still burdened by complex applications that make the transition to cloud and DevOps challenging. Over 44% of applications in traditional environments were considered complex for cloud. This indicates that brownfield and hybrid deployments with legacy integration will continue to be important.

    “We were pleasantly surprised by the response to our 2016 DevOps survey with over 2,000 respondents,” said Shashi Kiran, Quali Chief Marketing Officer. “The survey revealed interesting insights on adoption of cloud and DevOps, particularly in the context of hybrid clouds. What stood out most to us were some of the barriers around DevOps including culture, test automation and integration of legacy investments. These issues are consistent with patterns we’re seeing every day. Quali is working closely with our customers and partners to solve these issues to increase cloud and DevOps adoption. We have expanded our 2017 Cloud and DevOps survey and look forward to gaining deeper insights.”

    — Jules Louis

  • PwC select Thunderhead to deliver customer engagement for the PwC Suite

    London, United Kingdom – 13 March 2017 – Thunderhead, the leader in enterprise technology for customer engagement, today announces that its ONE Engagement Hub has been selected by PwC. PwC is launching PwC Suite – a brand new service created to deliver knowledge and insight to Tax, HR and Legal professionals that can be accessed on a 24/7 basis. Thunderhead’s ONE is a cloud-based customer engagement platform that surfaces unique customer insight and journey behaviour in real-time. It enables enterprises across all industry sectors to quickly optimise marketing, sales and service strategies, and drive conversation-led engagement.

    PwC Suite will use ONE to deliver hyper-personalised content, ensuring that clients receive relevant information tailored to their needs when they access the Suite.

    Michael Bailey at PwC said, “Thunderhead’s pioneering technology, the ONE Engagement Hub, is crucial to our PwC Suite service. The Suite gives our clients access to our services on-demand and in real-time. ONE has been extremely quick to deploy and allows us to give appropriate and relevant information to clients.”

    Glen Manchester commented, “PwC understand that their clients require unlimited access to their invaluable and trusted advice. ONE helps PwC to deliver an intelligent service and, critically, ensures that what’s important to clients is readily available when they need it. We’re excited to be working with PwC on their vision to provide this level of service – they’re setting a new standard in meeting client expectations.”

    — Jules Louis

  • IT Revolution Announces New Speakers from Hearst, ITV, Nordea, Orange and More for DevOps Enterprise Summit London 2017

    PORTLAND, Ore., March 9, 2017 – IT Revolution (http://itrevolution.com), the industry leader for advancing DevOps, today announced the second round of speakers for DevOps Enterprise Summit London 2017 (DOES17) and also extended Early Bird discounted registration pricing to March 22 (http://bit.ly/DOESEURreg). The newly added conference speakers have extensive experience implementing DevOps at large, complex organizations in the US, UK and Continental Europe.

    Hosted by IT Revolution and premier sponsor HPE Software, the second annual DevOps Enterprise Summit London event will be held June 5 and 6 at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. Blind Bird tickets have sold out and Early Bird registration is highly encouraged as the conference is anticipated to sell out early.

    Newly Added Speakers Include Leaders from Telecom, IT Services, Media, Government and Financial Services

    The second round of speakers to be included in the DOES17 London program include:

    • Alexa Alley, DevOps Program Manager, Hearst Business Media
    • Dr. Tuuli Bell, Partner Account Manager, EMEA, Tasktop
    • Amine Boudali, Core Banking Programme Platform Lead, Nordea
    • Tom Clark, Head of Common Platform, ITV
    • Sam Guckenheimer, Product Owner, Visual Studio Team Services, Microsoft
    • Andrea Hirzle-Yager, Head of department, IT, Allianz Deutschland AG
    • Bruno Meniere, Orange DevOps Country Delivery Programme Director, Orange
    • Mayank Prakash, Chief Digital and Information Officer, Department for Work and Pensions
    • Etelvina Melo Pires, Agile and DevOps Transformation Agent, Orange
    • Jose Quaresma, DevOps Lead DK, Accenture

    “I’m delighted to announce these talented technology leaders as speakers at the DevOps Enterprise Summit London. They will share their experiences, lessons learned and insights on how they’ve been using DevOps principles and patterns to transform their organizations,” said Gene Kim, founder of IT Revolution and co-author of “The Phoenix Project” and “The DevOps Handbook.” “As they share their stories, we have the opportunity to integrate those learnings on our own transformation journeys.”

    DOES17 Live Video Chat

    On March 1, Gene Kim was joined by fellow programming committee members Cornelia Davis (Pivotal), Jonathan Fletcher (Hiscox) and Jonathan Smart (Barclays) for a “Deep Dive into DevOps” video chat. Panelists reflected on the 2016 London event, shared insights about the upcoming event this June, and discussed new ideas for immersive conference programming. The full discussion can be viewed here: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_YcdOsIxUc).

    For more information about DOES17 London, please visit: (http://events.itrevolution.com/eu/).

    Share This: DevOps Enterprise Summit London Announces Next Round of Speakers! http://events.itrevolution.com/eu/speakers/ @DOES_EUR #DOES17 #DevOps

    — Jules Louis

  • Rainforest QA Launches Crowdsourced Exploratory Testing to Expand Test Coverage and Surface Issues Faster than Traditional Methods

    SAN FRANCISCO — March 9, 2017 —  Rainforest QA, creators of the world’s only AI-powered crowdtesting platform for agile and continuous integration software teams, today announced that Rainforest QA Exploratory is available to all customers. The new product leverages Rainforest’s unique crowdsourcing model to employ an elite, vetted tester army of thousands to perform exploratory tests in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of competitors.

    Bug discovery and building test coverage are two of the most time-consuming activities for QA teams. Typically, teams must devise and write tests ahead of time and continuously update them as software changes. While many teams frequently perform exploratory testing to surface undiscovered issues in their software, the undertaking is a manual and time intensive one that often takes away from development time and other QA activities.

    With Rainforest Exploratory’s unique crowdsourcing approach, companies can instead leverage a global team of testers to execute their exploratory testing. This elite group not only explores an application to identify new issues, but also creates tests to subsequently catch those newly-found issues in future test runs. Customers can expect results in as little as 48 hours, and results include documentation of issues found, video recordings of the test execution, and scripted Rainforest regression tests for easy replication.

    “Continuous deployment puts immense pressure on development teams; the demand oftentimes means businesses are shipping software with bugs, which can adversely impact their brands, customer loyalty and revenue,” said Fred Stevens-Smith, CEO of Rainforest QA. “Teams just don’t have the time or resources to perform continuous testing on their own, let alone scan for ‘unknown unknowns’ by regularly performing exploratory testing. With our crowdsourcing approach, we help protect a company’s product experience with a trained tester army that pulls double-duty: providing teams with a fast, resource-efficient way to scour their application for undiscovered issues and ensure that those newly found issues are tracked going forward.”

    Poll Everywhere, the online polling app, turned to Rainforest QA Exploratory to identify bugs without taking team members away from other projects. While Poll Everywhere is the leading audience polling platform, working with over 100,000 educators and 40% of Fortune 1000 companies worldwide, it runs a lean development team, comprised of one full time QA engineer and 17 developers. Iterating and deploying frequently through continuous integration, it’s imperative that testing is run as close to real-time as possible to enable the software to ship faster with less risk. After implementing the beta version of Exploratory, Poll Everywhere was able to increase its regression testing coverage by 104 percent and identify 75 new bugs, allowing the company to address significantly more issues before deployment.

    “Rainforest Exploratory allows us to find bugs quickly, deploy faster and ship code with more confidence,” said Brian Goodman, product manager at Poll Everywhere. “We use Exploratory to keep our development team focused on building new features, without sacrificing quality or test coverage.”

    For the full Poll Everywhere case study, visit https://www.rainforestqa.com/customers/poll-everywhere/.

    Exploratory by Rainforest QA is now available to all customers, following a beta test period last year. To get started with Rainforest Exploratory or add it to your existing Rainforest QA strategy, visit: https://www.rainforestqa.com/product/exploratory-testing/

    — Jules Louis

  • AppNeta Announces AppNeta Performance Manager

    BOSTON — March 9, 2017 — AppNeta, the leader in application and network monitoring, today unveiled the AppNeta Performance Manager, a new SaaS-based service that unites the three key aspects of measuring and monitoring application performance in a complete solution by combining application usage, delivery and experience data. AppNeta will be holding a webinar on March 16th, 2017 at 2pm to introduce the new offering – prospective and existing customers can sign up at http://info.appneta.com/introducing-appneta-performance-manager.html.

    Using AppNeta Performance Manager, IT and Network Operations teams gain confidence in their ability to ensure application delivery for every cloud, for any user, from any location. With AppNeta Performance Manager, IT Ops will be able to automatically see what applications are running across their organization and then set up continuous synthetic and network performance monitoring.

    As applications move to the cloud, IT and Network Operations teams are losing visibility. Only AppNeta Performance Manager delivers a complete view of performance from the end user, through the network, to the application. The result is 100% application delivery confidence for IT Operations teams.

    -Matt Stevens, AppNeta CEO

    AppNeta Performance Manager integrates AppNeta’s patented TruPath™ technology to allow customers to see application and network performance across public WAN and internet connections, providing performance insights where the cloud has caused IT organizations to lose visibility.

    At the same time, AppNeta has announced the world’s most advanced synthetic engine for the measurement of user experience, part of AppNeta Performance Manager. The unique solution combines Synthetic Transaction Monitoring (STM) with AppNeta’s patented active network insights, providing critical visibility into both application and network performance, leaving behind other STM offerings that are blind to the network.

    The new engine supports scripting against single-page applications and other complex, javascript-dependent web-based applications such as Google’s G-Suite or Microsoft Office 365. The engine also offers 100% Selenium compatibility, while also extending the functionality by incorporating AppNeta’s unique ability to create milestones across multiple pages or scripts. AppNeta is the only provider to offer universal script deployment, allowing customers to deploy the exact same script across both internally deployed AppNeta monitoring points, or via AppNeta’s network of over 60 global monitoring points, with no modification.

    Starting at only $1,299 per year to monitor up to five applications, AppNeta Performance Manager will be available to both new and existing customers in March with a focus on simple, predictable and scalable per-application pricing. “The IT industry is plagued by vendors who hide their pricing or require a calculator to get a clear price. AppNeta is focused on providing transparent and predictable pricing for our customers,” Stevens said. To learn more and get started, visit www.appneta.com.

    – See more at: https://www.appneta.com/press-room/appneta-performance-manager/#sthash.MnaSx6Hx.dpuf

    — Jules Louis

  • Ubertesters announces the next generation QA beta management platform, Ubertesters 2.0

    Ubertesters announces the next generation QA beta management platform, Ubertesters 2.0

    Ramsey, NJ— March 09, 2017 – Ubertesters, a world leading provider of QA testing solutions, announced today the release of its next generation QA mobile beta management platform, Ubertesters 2.0.  

    “The launch of Ubertesters 2.0 makes our QA mobile management platform well matched to the enterprise world”, said Ran Rachlin, Ubertesters co-founder and CEO. “The mobile QA process went through massive changes in the past years, and the shorter release cycles, together with the need to test globally on many devices with remote testers and crowd testing, makes our new release essential for better, easier, and more informative management of the mobile QA manual testing process on the way to a well-tested app”   

    Ubertesters 2.0 delivers a wide range of features and infrastructure enhancements.

    Automatic SDK insertion

    With the automatic SDK integration, the mobile manager can integrate the Ubertesters SDK in an easy, seamless way and eliminate the need to rely on mobile developers.

    Users’ activity video-recording

    The new video recording feature allows the developer to see exactly what had gone wrong before the bug/crash happened including essential indicators (CPU, memory, network, etc.).

    Integration with Asana

    All reported bugs and issues can now be pushed and exported to the system that customers like to work with.

    Ubertesters SDK auto-disabling

    Companies can launch a mobile app with the confidence that the SDK is disabled when moving to production mode.

    Together with additional platform improvements and a crowd of global testers for hire, all new features are designed to help organizations achieve efficiencies by improving their overall mobile QA management experience.


    Full details and product images are available at https://ubertesters.com/meet-ubertesters-2-0/

    — Jules Louis

  • Redgate extends DevOps to SQL Server databases with Microsoft Visual Studio 2017

    Redgate extends DevOps to SQL Server databases with Microsoft Visual Studio 2017

    Cambridge UK, Tuesday 7 March 2017 – Redgate Software, a leading Microsoft SQL Server tools vendor, has partnered with Microsoft to integrate its Redgate Data Tools with Microsoft Visual Studio Enterprise 2017, which launched today.  The addition of Redgate Data Tools gives users the ability to extend DevOps processes to their Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL databases out-of-the-box.

    Redgate Data Tools includes ReadyRoll Core, SQL Prompt Core and SQL Search, and is part of the data storage and processing workload in Visual Studio 2017, which Enterprise subscribers can install at no additional cost as part of the standard installation process.

    Redgate ReadyRoll Core enables users to develop, source control, and more safely automate the deployment of SQL Server database changes alongside their application changes. Similarly, SQL Prompt Core and SQL Search, Redgate’s most popular and widely used productivity tools, complement the DevOps methodology by allowing users to work more quickly and accurately with SQL.

    The integration of Redgate tools with Visual Studio 2017 is a direct result of the rising interest in DevOps practices, which was highlighted in Redgate’s State of Database DevOps Survey in January 2017. The survey of 1,000 companies worldwide revealed that 47% of respondents have already adopted a DevOps approach to some or all of their projects – and a further 33% plan to adopt it during the next two years.

    DevOps encourages collaboration across teams that have traditionally been split into development and operations, and results in earlier feedback on changes, and the ability to deliver value to customers more quickly and efficiently. A common hurdle, however, is the database which has unique requirements and often follows a different development process from that used for application development.

    The inclusion of Redgate Data Tools in Visual Studio Enterprise 2017 creates a natural platform for both application and database development. One of the tools, SQL Search, is also included in the Community and Professional versions of Visual Studio 2017, so all users can benefit from increased productivity when working with SQL.

    Simon Galbraith, Redgate CEO, is enthusiastic about the partnership. “We’ve been developing software for the Microsoft data platform for 17 years,” he says, “and we’ve always had a good relationship. Shipping the Redgate Data Tools in Visual Studio Enterprise 2017 is a sign of how strong that relationship is – and also a recognition that database DevOps is now moving into the mainstream.”

    Shawn Nandi, Senior Director for Cloud App Development and Data product marketing at Microsoft Corp. added, “Redgate tools are a great option for customers who work with SQL Server and Azure SQL databases because they plug into the software they already use for application development. By including three of these tools in Visual Studio Enterprise 2017, Redgate has made it easier for customers to implement DevOps practices when building, deploying and maintaining their databases. We think this is an important step forward to help companies extend DevOps practices to all parts of their applications.”

     

    — Jules Louis

  • Webinar: Lesson Learned in Scaling Enterprise DevOps

    Webinar: Lesson Learned
    in Scaling Enterprise DevOps

    DevOps is evolving into a major enabler of business innovation. If done well in a consistent, scalable and repeatable manner, it can accelerate digital transformation at an enterprise level. But crossing the chasm from successful DevOps pilots with two-pizza teams to enterprise-wide adoption remains a challenge. Join this live panel session featuring guest speakers from Nationwide Insurance, South African Revenue Service and IBM as they share their unique challenges and best practices in scaling-up DevOps adoption as well as steps you can take now to assess your own organization’s readiness.

     RECORDING

    SLIDES

    [slideshare id=72914854&doc=webinarslidesfinal7march-170307193318]

    — Jules Louis