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Category: DevOps World

Looking to the Future: What’s in Store for DevOps World 2021
Here in the U.S., when our calendars turn to September we know that some exciting things are about to happen. Trees change up their wardrobe. Pumpkin spice lattes warm the fingers and hearts of the masses. And the world’s premier DevOps conference opens its doors to thousands of enthusiasts.

Yes, it’s that time of year. DevOps World 2021 is taking place on September 28-30, and the organizers are hard at work ensuring that this year’s event will be the best one ever. Like last year, the 2021 version will be virtual, making it easy for attendees to log on from the comforts of their workplace or couch. It will feature a full slate of engaging sessions, speakers and networking opportunities for every member of the DevOps community.

In 2021, we had attendees “show us their world”—giving them a chance to engage in two-way dialogue from thousands of locations across the globe. This year, the event is going “back to the future.” We won’t have any time machines on hand, but we will be focusing on how we can build the future of software delivery together through security, CI/CD, scalability and DevOps best practices.

Like last year, you can log on, watch keynotes, participate in break-out sessions, network with attendees, scan the virtual sponsor booths, attend demos and gain certifications on your computer, tablet or hand-held device. And, aside from a handful of training sessions, it’s all free.

The official theme of DevOps World 2021 is “Building the Future of Software Together.” As we’ve seen over the past year, during the pandemic, the future is now! Organizations have moved rapidly to scale up their technology resources to increase agility, efficiency and customer engagement. Software delivery will serve as the critical driver as they transform their operations to meet future challenges.

So, what can you expect at DevOps World 2021?

Thought-Provoking Keynotes

The headliner for this year’s event will be Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. The man they call “Woz” was the chief designer for the first wave of computers that launched Apple on its journey to becoming the $2 trillion global powerhouse that it is today. Over the years he’s been involved in a variety of business and philanthropic ventures focusing on everything from software engineering to blockchain technology.

Wozniak will deliver a keynote called Future of Security Working Together. During the session, he will talk with Hope Lynch, technology strategy director at CloudBees, about topics ranging from Apple’s innovation and creativity to robotics and automation to his personal vision for the future of technology.

Wozniak will close the show on Sept. 30. Other keynotes will cover the following topics:

● Build the Future Today – Presented by Stephen DeWitt, CEO, CloudBees

● Security and Scalability Using Open Source Tools – Presented by Dan Lorenc, Google software engineer
- Elite Performers: The Future of Software Innovation — Presented by Stephen DeWitt, CEO, CloudBees; Sacha Labourey, CSO, CloudBees; and Sandhya Sridharan, managing director and head of core engineering, JPMorgan Chase
- LIFE: Software Delivery Edition — Presented by Prakash Sethuraman, CISO, CloudBees; Marisa Shumway, vice president, product marketing, CloudBees; and Kristin Baskett, head of technical marketing, CloudBees
- DevOps Radio 2.0 – Presented by Shawn Ahmed, CMO, CloudBees, and Ger McMahon, head of ALM tools & platforms, Fidelity
- CloudBees Innovation Awards – Presented by Jeanne Talbot, senior director of corporate communications, CloudBees
Dynamic Sessions

This year’s DevOps World 2021 is packed with must-see sessions for developers and tech executives alike. With over 100 different sessions and 130 speakers, everyone is sure to find a full slate of sessions that will engage them and challenge their skills. Topics include security, DevSecOps, compliance, diversity, inclusion and belonging, building careers, progressive delivery, automation, value stream management, Kubernetes, cloud, GitOps, open source and Jenkins, measurement and ROI.

The best part of these sessions is that for those who join live, you’ll be able to interact with other attendees and, in many cases, with the speakers as well. But if something suddenly comes up and you can’t make your favorite session, don’t worry! You can stream all sessions on-demand.

New Tracks

DevOps World 2021 is debuting two new tracks—financial services and public sector—to focus on the unique challenges and requirements of these industry segments and personnel. Forward-looking enterprises and government agencies such as American Family Insurance, the U.S. Air Force, Broadridge Financial Solutions and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will share their DevOps best practices. The popular leadership track will continue this year, with sessions tailored for executives who are leading DevOps and transformation initiatives. Community tracks and those led by the Continuous Delivery Foundation will also take center stage.

Great Sponsors

Dozens of leading organizations in the industry will be supporting DevOps World, and most of them will have virtual booths in the Expo Hall. Exhibitors include AWS, Sonatype, Mirantis, VMware, CyberArk, the Continuous Delivery Foundation and many more. Check out the full list of sponsors here.

Award Winners

As we do every year, The DevOps World 2021 Awards will recognize the achievements of DevOps innovators around the globe. The CloudBees Innovation Awards will honor companies that demonstrate quantifiable business value from using CloudBees solutions. CloudBees awards include designations for DevOps and Analytics; DevOps Scalability Achievement; DevOps Rising Star; Security, Compliance and Audit Innovation; and Enterprise Progressive Delivery.

Workshops, Training and/or Certifications

For DevOps World 2021, CloudBees will be hosting a variety of workshops held at varying times to accommodate global participants. This year’s workshops include “Self-Service Releases with CloudBees Software Delivery Automation,” “Building Audit-Ready Pipelines with CloudBees Software Delivery Automation,” “Flexible Delivery Methodologies with CloudBees Feature Management” and “Configuration as Code with CloudBees Continuous Integration.” If you’re interested in attending any of these workshops, a workshop pass also includes complimentary access to the CloudBees Certification program!

Register Today!

With all of these exciting sessions, keynotes, workshops and more, now is the time to register for this year’s DevOps World event! We’re excited to bring everyone back for another year of virtual fun as we come together to build the future of software. To ensure your free spot at DevOps World 2021, register today!
September 9, 2021
DevOps World 2021: FinServ, Leadership, Practitioner and Government Tracks

What does it take to power a successful DevOps conference? For DevOps World 2021, it all starts with the ‘engine’—the content. This year’s event, hosted September 28-30, brings more than 100 sessions divided into a number of tracks designed to teach, inspire and guide the DevOps industry to the future. The diverse lineup includes financial services, leadership, practitioner and government tracks.

New this year are the federal and financial services tracks. The sessions in these tracks will be led by enterprise and government agencies including Capital One, U.S. Air Force, The Internal Revenue Service and more. Attendees will come away from these sessions with unique and actionable advice tailored to these industry segments to help them keep up with the rapid pace of digital growth and transformation today.

This year’s DevOps World tracks are designed to give a comprehensive look at DevOps applications, challenges and successes across industries and verticals. With over 130 speakers from around the world, attendees will gather virtually to share insights, helping to drive the future of software delivery, together.

Here are a few highlights from these tracks at DevOps World 2021.

Financial Services Track

Despite heavy and increasing regulatory pressures, banks and financial services organizations from all over the world are proving that speed does not jeopardize compliance and flexibility does not come at the cost of repeatability. Some of the best-known banks in the world will share key pillars for success, what enterprise-class release pipelines really look like, how to optimize, measure and share success—even how to dissolve your central IT organization. This track will take a deep dive into the lessons learned along the way and best practices for implementation.

Sessions such as “Enterprise Release Pipelines For The Financial Industry,” and “Salesforce and Automation: FinServ And The Non-Technical User,” will guide attendees through the use of DevOps in the financial sector.

Leadership Track

Leaders aren’t born with their skills fully formed—they’re made. They mature into their positions over time, growing stronger with training and experience gained along the way. This new track, chaired by independent analyst firm Accelerated Strategies Group (ASG), is designed to provide attendees access to strategic business thinking and deep technical expertise. The mix of presentations, panels, hands-on exercises and peer interaction will equip a whole new generation of digital leaders. Each unique session will provide attendees with valuable strategies they can take back and apply to their practices. Above all, this track will help leaders to differentiate their business and drive strong transformation initiatives.

Sessions such as, “A Hundred Deploys A Day: Five Steps To Success,” and “When You Exclude, You Lose: The Hidden Costs Of Exclusion,” will help to kick off this learning opportunity for leaders. For those interested in finding out how to “Put Customers At The Center Of Software Delivery Management,” Forrester analyst Margo Visitacion has a session covering how leading companies are implementing this new, customer-centric operating model.

Practitioner Track

Amidst a year heavy with data breaches, leaks and hacks, security continues to be top of mind for software leaders and practitioners. From the software being delivered to the pipelines that deliver them, identifying potential attack vectors is more important than ever; not to mention the challenges of achieving and retaining compliance in a rapidly changing landscape.

This year’s practitioner track was created to focus on practical security topics. Attendees can benefit from sessions outlining threat modeling, common failures and how to avoid them and the roles of observability and culture in security. Attendees will learn about hot topics including software bill of materials (SBOM) and military-grade container security. Sessions such as “Securing The Software Supply Chain – It’s Not Just About The Code,” for example, offer expert insight for practitioners in the DevOps space.

Federal Track

DevSecOps has hit its stride in the federal space. Few systems are as critical as those in the public sector, and ensuring efficiency, security and compliance across the table has been a major focus. DevSecOps is playing an important role for government services and agencies as they work to meet the needs of both private citizens, the public sector and the military. Speakers in this track will share exactly how this can be accomplished.

Sessions will cover how federal agencies are implementing DevSecOps processes to automate and secure their software supply chains. An important part of this conversation will include how these implementations help to deliver higher quality services to citizens as well as provide more capabilities to our military. Sessions such as “From Startup To Enterprise: Migrating The Air Force’s Largest Data Center To Cloud Computing And DevSecOps,” will deliver an inside look into the latest federal advancements in DevOps and DevSecOps.

Free registration is open for the DevOps World 2021 — take advantage of these comprehensive tracks and start the journey to the future of software delivery by registering today!

September 7, 2021
DevOps World 2021: 3 Sessions for Successful Scaling

Your business has grown from a startup of five people to a full-blown organization of 100 … congrats! But, now what? The practices that worked for a smaller company may have worked as you first started growing, but now it’s time to scale operations to fit your new needs. Just like a kid outgrowing their clothes, your organization needs a new “wardrobe,” and scalability is key for long-term success.

This year’s virtual conference—scheduled for Sept. 28-30—will offer a number of breakout sessions, panels and keynotes focused on scalability within enterprises. If you’re ready to scale within your business, here are a few sessions from this year’s conference to help get you started.

From Startup To Enterprise—Sustainably Scaling

Many organizations struggle to scale DevOps culture as they grow. Now it’s time to say goodbye to the startup phase and hello to thinking like an enterprise.

Alston Rousseau, director of software delivery at Campspot and Kailene Cloud, director of talent acquisition at Bonusly, will walk attendees through the investment needed to sustainably scale operations, development and culture. Plus, they will share tips for finding more value in existing commitments to money spending, time and diversity in DevOps and how this approach applies to organizations with and without high compliance requirements.

Scaling up Car Configuration: From a Statically Hosted Front End to Universally Rendered Services

Over the past year, tech company Code Orange made the transition from a traditional API/SPA split to a much more technically challenging server-rendered SPA with full cache handover.

In this breakout session led by Niels Hoiting, a developer at Code Orange, attendees will learn more about Code Orange’s transition from API/SPA split to server-rendered SPA while analyzing the pitfalls that can arise in the transition and how to optimize compute spend to best handle a specific workload.

Leveraging CloudBees to Scale Satellite Ground System Emulation in Multifaceted Virtual Environments

Aerospace and defense technology manufacturer Raytheon Technologies has successfully implemented CI/CD pipelines for the test and near-operational integration of both software and hardware for a global satellite ground system.

In this breakout session led by Casey Jackman, deputy of GPS Product Factory at Raytheon, attendees will discover how Raytheon uses simulated satellite control stations in virtual private clouds for CI, test and check-out. Additionally, Casey will share how the team met challenges in initial pipeline generation between multiple disparate target environments with AWS and on-premise data centers.

Think it’s time to scale your organization? Register now for DevOps World 2021 to get started.

September 2, 2021
CloudBees Advances Expanding DevOps Agenda

CloudBees today at its online DevOps World 2020 conference announced it is embedding additional DevSecOps capabilities that span the application development and deployment process within the continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform based on the open source Jenkins projects.

In addition, CloudBees announced it will make generally available by the end of this year two additional modules for its Software Delivery Management (SDM) platform. Launched last year, the SDM platform provides a centralized mechanism for all stakeholders in the enterprise to track application development projects.

The first module available today unifies the management of feature flags across an entire application development project. The second creates a system of record for tracking progress by importing and normalizing all the data made available by the tools that make up a DevOps platform.

The DevSecOps offerings, meanwhile, provide IT teams with a hardened instance of the CloudBees CI offering, along with hardened audit-ready pipelines to ensure only immutable, approved components and environments are used without any drift or tampering. CloudBees is also adding support for role-based access controls based on fine-grained permissions as well as tighter integration with the feature-flagging capabilities of the CI/CD platform. If issues arise in a production environment, specific features can be pulled back with full traceability provided automatically.

Finally, CloudBees has integrated its CI/CD platform with security automation applications from Anchore, Alcide.io, FOSSA, CyberArk, Checkmarx, Contrast Security, Shiftleft.io, Snyk, RunSafe Security, Sonatype, WhiteSource Software, Synopsys and Zimperium.

CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey said in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s clear organizations are accelerating the development and deployment of more sensitive applications that drive digital business transformation initiatives. In fact, according to the results of a survey of 347 IT professionals conducted by Accelerated Strategies Group (ASG) on behalf of CloudBees published today, digital transformation objectives have somewhat or significantly increased in priority for nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents.

Slightly more than half said their organizations have also placed higher priorities on increasing their DevOps initiatives (52%). Many are also now practicing daily standup meetings (56%), using cross-functional teams (46%) and automating tasks (43%).

Overall, 59% said their software teams have become somewhat or significantly more productive, with 43% reporting it is now easier to complete work tasks in a timely fashion. Nearly two-thirds (61%) said they are also finding it easier to work across time zones and, in some cases, even different continents (39%).

Labourey said that as digital business initiatives continue to gain steam, more organizations will be applying DevOps principles to the business itself. SDM platforms will play a critical role in enabling that transition by providing a common framework through which IT and business professionals will be able to collaborate more closely, said Labourey. The goal should not be to turn software development into a factory, but rather to prioritize projects and initiatives in a way that benefits the business.

Ideally, SDM also provides a framework through which IT teams can manage up at a time when many business leaders lack visibility into often complex DevOps processes that tend to have lots of dependencies, noted Labourey.

In the meantime, the divide between all the application owners, IT teams and security professionals that make up an IT community within an organization continues to narrow. The challenge now will be determining what to do next, once all those constituencies are finally seeing the same thing at the same time.

September 22, 2020
New Tracks = New Insights at DevOps World 2020

What’s new at DevOps World this year? Aside from the fact that this year’s event, happening today through Sept. 24, is being held virtually and is free of charge, DevOps World is also reorganizing the conference into three new tracks: Leadership, Community and CDF (Continuous Delivery Foundation).

Together, the three tracks illustrate the broad-ranging focus DevOps World strives to achieve. The conference aims to educate, entertain and elevate the DevOps community with informative, thought-provoking content. The Leadership track will spark conversations about DevOps now and into the future. The Community track focuses on how Jenkins devotees can better leverage the CI/CD resource inside their organizations. CDF track outlines best practices for CI/CD implementations.

DevOps World Tracks

Here are a few highlights from the new tracks at DevOps World 2020.

Leadership

Leaders aren’t born with their skills fully formed. They grow into their positions over time, growing stronger with training and experience along the way. This new track, chaired by independent analyst firm Accelerated Strategies Group (ASG), is designed to provide attendees access to strategic business thinking and deep technical expertise. The mix of presentations, panels, hands-on exercises and interaction with peers will equip a whole new generation of digital leaders.

What’s included in the Leadership track? Sessions will explore the ins and outs of everything from software quality to DevSecOps, from value stream thinking to the future of open source and DevOps in the enterprise. You’ll hear from CloudBees customers including T-Mobile and Fidelity Investments and thought leaders from ASG and IBM.

Do you want to know how to “Put Customers At The Center Of Software Delivery Management”? Forrester analyst Margo Visitacion has a session covering how leading companies are implementing this new, customer-centric operating model.

What can the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency doctrine teach you about advancing DevOps internally? Lindsay Holmwood, an engineering leader from Australia, will explain to attendees not only how to push DevOps forward but also how to fend off threats to its success. Naysayers will try to derail DevOps initiatives. Understanding the strategies and tactics used by the U.S. military to stop insurgencies can help you build a strong DevOps culture in your organization.

Community

This track pulls together the best elements of the movement that sparked the DevOps World conference into what it is today. It focuses on Jenkins, the world’s leading continuous integration and continuous delivery server, along with CI/CD tools, concepts and technologies that enthusiasts can use to do a better job delivering software.

Many sessions focus on Jenkins itself. CloudBees’ Oleg Nenashev’s breakout session, “Jenkins: Where It Is and Where It is Going,” provides an overview of the Jenkins configuration-as-code (CaC) ecosystem, Docker/Kubernetes support and environments as well as new Jenkins Pipeline features that create a shared vision for modern and cloud-friendly Jenkins. Other sessions include, “Machine Learning Plugins for Data Science in Jenkins,” “External Fingerprint Storage for Jenkins,” and “Jenkins UI Gets a Makeover.”

Practitioners from companies ranging in size from Wintellect to Salesforce will share other lessons of interest to the community. Ken Muse of Wintellect will give a talk on “Hyperscale Migrations – Tricks for Supporting Large Migrations with DevOps,” while Salesforce’s Scott Glaser will discuss his company’s “Culture of Collaboration and Sharing at Scale.” AKELESS’s Oded Hareven has pointers on how to “Streamline Your CI/CD Pipeline by Adopting a Just-in-Time Access Approach.” Splunk Inc.’s Chris Riley will outline ways to empower engineering teams in a breakout session, “How A Culture of ‘Be Yourself’ Generates More Revenue for the Business.”

CDF

This track is coordinated by the Continuous Delivery Foundation, a group created by the Linux Foundation to serve as a vendor-neutral home for many of the fastest-growing projects for continuous delivery. It pulls together nearly two dozen sessions on DevOps trends, technology resources such as Kubernetes and initiatives driven by the CDF itself.

One trend that’s catching on is the use of new organizational models to break down silos that can inhibit DevOps transformations. Capital Carbon Consulting’s Garima Bajpai discusses how a “Continuous Product Oriented Practice” can transform the qualitative way products are built and tracked into a quantitative way by identifying and measuring “value” in practice. The CDF’s Tracy Miranda and DeployHub’s Tracy Ragan present thoughts about how to bring more women into DevOps and help the open source community become more inclusive.

Kubernetes has become a de facto standard in container orchestration, so it’s probably no surprise there’s so much interest in the subject at DevOps World 2020. CircleCI’s Angel Rivera presents an overview of the containerization trend, arguing that a better understanding of runtime-related concepts will better prepare DevOps teams for the future. Cloud costs are on the agenda in Harness’ Tiffany Jachja’s session, which outlines ways attendees can optimize Kubernetes workloads.

What’s happening with CDF? A panel discussion with six CDF leaders will offer insights on the direction of the CDF, cover some of the strategic goals and review what’s next for the upcoming year.

To take advantage of these exciting new tracks, join us today!

September 22, 2020
What To Expect at a Virtual DevOps World 2020
DevOps World is coming soon and this means you can look forward to plenty of opportunities to learn about all things DevOps, network with like-minded professionals, attend in-depth training courses and technical workshops and just generally have some fun.

DevOps World 2020 will have all those things. But, with the pandemic still impacting society, this year’s conference will be different. It will be held virtually Sept. 22-24, with all sessions and activities free of charge.

The conference, hosted as usual by CloudBees, will bring all the elements of the world’s biggest and best DevOps-focused event to the people themselves—making it all available with a few clicks of the mouse. We have created a tremendous array of content and added new technological features that will enable attendees to interact virtually like you are really there.

Here is a brief rundown of what to expect at DevOps World 2020.

DevOps World 2020: Transforming the Future of Software Delivery

The pandemic has spurred companies across the world to embrace a whole new way of working. It has taken people outside their office environments and placed them into new situations where the lines between work and home start to blur. This has disrupted our work patterns, but at the same time has given people a chance to gain a new perspective.

During DevOps World, we’ll be exploring what people’s worlds are like now—and how DevOps is transforming the world of software delivery. We’ll host sessions that focus on how businesses are adapting their ways of thinking during the pandemic. They’ll talk about how they’re using new technologies, changing processes, adjusting timelines and engaging in new ways with employees, customers and business partners. Software is driving change in today’s world, and we’ll be discussing how DevOps done well can lead the way into the future.

Interaction

Conferences, of course, are great places to engage in impromptu meetups, establish new contacts and just enjoy the benefits of an upbeat gathering. The pandemic has put in-person events on hold for 2020, but we’ve come up with a lot of fun ways to interact virtually. Attendees can use new chat features installed to interact not only during Q&As with the speakers but also for random meetups with other attendees. We even have virtual expo booths where you can interact via live video and chat with DevOps experts from companies around the globe. The one we’re especially looking forward to is a new “speed meeting,” during which attendees can be paired with another attendee randomly for a 30-second video chat.

Keynotes

DevOps World has always been known for its vibrant and thought-provoking set of keynote speakers. This year’s conference will push the envelope once again with nine industry leaders presenting talks focusing on where DevOps is now, where it’s headed and how the audience can best leverage advanced practices to succeed in the future.

Speakers include:
- Mitch Ashley, CEO of Accelerated Strategies Group.
- James Governor, co-founder of Redmonk.
- Dr. Ann Marie Imafidon, co-founder and CEO of Stemettes.
- Marky Jackson, director of open Source and CDF community ambassador, OpsMx.
- Tracy Ragan, CEO of DeployHub and CDF governing board member.
- Jacqueline Salinas, director of ecosystem and community development at the CD Foundation.
I will offer perspectives on industry trends alongside two other CloudBees executives, CEO Sacha Labourey and SVP and GM of SDM Shawn Ahmed.

Breakout Sessions

There will be more than 100 business and technical breakout sessions hosted by a wide cross-section of DevOps rock stars including:
- “Data-Driven DevOps: The Key to Improving Speed & Scale,” by Jenkins founder Kohsuke Kawaguchi.
- “Automated Testing as a Part of Pipelines,” by IBM’s Rosalind Radcliffe.
- “Chaos Engineering the Chaos Engineers,” by Gremlin’s Jason Yee.
- “eBay’s Journey Building CI at Scale,” by eBay’s Ravi Kiran Rao Bukka and Vasumathy Seenuvasan.
- “Bad Code Kills: Five Essential Quality Gates You Need in Your CloudBees Core Pipeline,” by OverOps’ Eric Mizell.
Training and Certification

As a reward for participation in the sessions and engagement with the sponsors, DevOps World participants will have the chance to receive a free certification voucher, which can be used for CloudBees 2, Certified Jenkins Engineer or CloudBees Certified Jenkins Engineer certifications. More information about these certifications can be found on CloudBees.com.

In addition, the conference will hold a series of post-show workshop sessions Friday, Sept. 25. The following sessions will be offered: CloudBees CI Workshop – Manage Continuous Integration at Scale, Getting Started with Jenkins Configuration as Code, CloudBees CI Workshop – A Developer Centric Experience, Free Tools for Evaluating Open Source Dependencies and Risk, Hands-On Workshop: Getting Starting With Feature Flags and Measuring and Projecting the Business Impact of DevOps: A Hands-On Workshop.

The Fun Part

This year’s DevOps World will have a virtual fun element to it. We are running a social media campaign with the hashtag “#ShowUsYourWorld.” Over the last few months, our offices and homes have blended together into a truly organic work-life balance and we want to see what the attendees’ world looks like: How you’ve adapted, what you’ve learned, what obstacles you’ve overcome, how your priorities have shifted. Our aim is to celebrate the global DevOps community by giving individuals the chance to share their stories with us. Another fun thing that we’ll be doing during the conference is a 5k run competition tracked via a fitness app, with prizes going toward charity donations.

DevOps World 2020

DevOps World has set the standard as the premier DevOps event on the calendar. While this year’s edition won’t gather all 15,000 attendees under one roof, it’ll still promise to do what it always does: exceed expectations. To ensure your free spot at DevOps World 2020, register today!
September 17, 2020
CloudBees Advances Continuous Delivery

At the DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019 conference, CloudBees released an update to the continuous delivery (CD) platform it gained via its acquisition of Electric Cloud, signaling the company’s commitment to investing in a platform that’s employed widely in the enterprise.

CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey said the rechristened CloudBees Flow builds on the application release orchestration (ARO) platform to further automate the last mile of a DevOps process.

Version 9.1 of CloudBees Flow provides a path to increased visibility into how a release is progressing, including the ability to view the inventory being deployed to a given environment and deeper insights into all the sub-pipelines that make up an overall release.

The latest release also provides more granular control over release pipeline execution, customizable dashboards within the platform’s Release Command Center and data archiving capabilities that make it easier to comply with regulatory mandates.

Labourey said that while companies that have developed commercial software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications tend to have very mature DevOps processes, most enterprise IT organizations are still defining the best DevOps practices they want to implement across their organization end to end. CloudBees Flow provides a continuous delivery framework for automating the deployment of applications at enterprise scale that complements the Jenkins continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) platform, he said.

Labourey noted the goal is to eventually unify continuous delivery processes across multiple platforms, including the ARO platform provided by Electric Flow, the Jenkins CI/CD platform and the Jenkins X and Spinnaker platforms that are optimized for building and deploying microservices-based applications on top of Kubernetes. As part of that effort, earlier this year CloudBees became a founding member of the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF), an arm of The Linux Foundation dedicated to foster best continuous delivery practices.

Most organizations that have adopted CI/CD platforms have seen varying degrees of success in taking advantage of continuous integration to accelerate the development of their applications. Continuous delivery, however, has proven to be a much bigger challenge. Organizations tend to struggle with everything from making sure they have the appropriate infrastructure resources available to support a new release of an application to debugging application code before and after it’s deployed in a production environment.

It may be a while before most enterprise organizations truly master DevOps processes end to end. However, given how dependent on software most organizations are, increased reliance on DevOps processes has become a prerequisite for any form of digital business transformation. As the volume of software being developed increases, the rate at which updates to applications are being made also increases substantially. Most organizations are not going to be able to keep pace with that rate of change by relying on legacy software development and deployment processes.

In many more cases now, however, the challenge organizations are wrestling with is not so much whether to transition to DevOps, but rather determining which DevOps processes to standardize on to satisfy the elevated expectations of business leaders anxious to provide customers with that next great application experience.

— Mike Vizard

August 14, 2019
CloudBees Harnesses Additional Cloud Bursting

At the DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019 conference, CloudBees announced that the latest version of its CloudBees Accelerator platform now supports cloud bursting to all three of the major public cloud service providers.

CloudBees Accelerator makes it possible to distribute the build, quality assurance and testing cycles across a large cluster of inexpensive servers. Version 11.1 further extends that capability into the public cloud by adding support for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, alongside existing support for Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Company CEO Sacha Labourey said as organizations embrace multiple clouds for application development and deployment, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) platforms will need to span hybrid cloud computing environments. Most organizations are not yet making use of multiple public clouds to develop an application, but they are increasingly relying on external cloud resources to augment the infrastructure resources they have available in on-premises IT environments.

In addition to providing cloud bursting support for Azure and GCP, version 11.1 of CloudBees Accelerator provides support for Android Q, a forthcoming update to the widely employed mobile operating system due out in the third quarter of this year. Other new capabilities include support for the SSL and TLS cryptographic protocols and improvements to out-of-the-box support for Windows, including the ability to distribute and cache Visual Studio projects.

Version 11.1 of CloudBees Accelerator also now makes it possible to apply CloudBees Electrify, a framework for optimizing the use of all available infrastructure in parallel, to accelerate build tools such as MSBuild and Scons. In addition, it provides improvements for the open source Yocto Project, an initiative from the Linux Foundation that streamlines the creation of Linux distributions for embedded systems. CloudBees Accelerator enables developers to at least triple the speeds of builds using BitBake build tools or Buildroot files and patches.

As expansion occurs in both the volume and types of applications that organizations rely on to build and deploy faster, the need to rely more on automation also is increasing. Many DevOps processes that organizations adopt initially have been crafted manually. As organizations become more adept, however, it becomes apparent there is an opportunity to automate a wide range of lower-level processes. Frameworks such as CloudBees Accelerator essentially provide a layer of abstraction that enables organizations to devote more time and energy to writing application code.

In fact, the next wave of organizations adopting DevOps is likely to benefit greatly from all the processes that the first wave of adopters helped automate by identifying best DevOps practices. It remains to seen just how automated the entire CI/CD environment can become with the rise of, for example, artificial intelligence (AI), but with each passing upgrade cycle, the accessibility of DevOps increases thanks primarily to advances in automation. Those advances not only make it easier to share best DevOps practices across an enterprise, but they also make it feasible for more organizations to embrace DevOps because the level of expertise required to master those DevOps processes declines.

— Mike Vizard

August 14, 2019
What to Expect from DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019

The clock is ticking. DevOps World | Jenkins World, the world’s biggest annual gathering of Jenkins users and DevOps practitioners, is just around the corner, scheduled for August 12-15 in San Francisco. The agenda is set. The DevOps Community is rolling out the red carpet. Are you coming?

You’ll be among the largest gathering of DevOps superheroes. We’re also pulling out all the stops, offering more speaker sessions, a bigger expo set-up and a themed superhero after-party for conference-goers to let loose at, following a full day of activities.

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the city of San Francisco itself is a world-class conference draw. We’re looking forward to sharing a few days with a record 2,000 attendees in just a few short weeks.

This year’s theme is “Transform and Deliver,” and the conference will deliver on a number of fronts. It will entertain, educate and maybe even surprise attendees with the wide array of offerings planned for the four-day time frame. It also will focus on the concept of delivering software–highlighting the value digital transformation has in delivering software more efficiently, more quickly and with higher quality.

Whether you are already prepping for the show or still considering a trip, here are a few of the things on tap for this year’s event.

Sessions and Speakers

At DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019, you’ll find plenty of opportunities to learn and engage at every turn. This year’s San Francisco event will feature more than 100 sessions covering a wide range of DevOps-, software delivery- and Jenkins-related topics. In San Francisco, sessions will be conducted by practitioners from organizations such as: Adobe, CloudBees, Eli Lilly, Fugue, Google, IBM, Latam Airlines, Liberty Mutual, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP Labs and The Hartford.

Let’s talk specifics. This year, attendees can learn about everything from cloud native and Kubernetes to pipeline development and management, CI/CD, release management, data and reporting, DevOps and security/compliance. Highlights include From Zero to DevOps Superhero: The Container Edition, with Jessica Dean of Microsoft; Continuous Delivery Directly to the Car, with Rafal Kowalski of Grape Up; 10 Attributes of the DevSecOps Elite with Derek Weeks of Sonatype and Hasan Yasar of Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute.

The conference will feature a series of keynote addresses, as well. Speakers will include CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey, Jenkins Founder Kohsuke Kawaguchi, CloudBees VP of Marketing Shawn Ahmed, CloudBees VP of Product Management Ben Williams, CloudBees CMO Andre Pino, Google Cloud Developer Advocate Dave Stanke, Redmonk Co-founder James Governor, CloudBees Director of Open Source Community Tracy Miranda, Cloud Native Computing Foundation CTO/COO Chris Aniszczyk, Jenkins X Co-creator James Strachan, Netflix Director of Delivery Engineering Andy Glover and Google Cloud Platform Engineering Manager Tara Hernandez.

Training, Workshops and Jenkins Certifications

If the training and workshops–held on the conference’s first two days–help provide the skills needed to help your organization transform to DevOps, the final two days (August 12-13) offer up a wide variety of sessions from experts that will enable you to deliver success.

Training topics will include Continuous Delivery with Jenkins X, DevSecOps Engineering Certification, DevOps Leader Certification, Jenkins Admin Fundamentals, CloudBees Core Fundamentals and Continuous Delivery with Jenkins on Google Kubernetes Engine. All trainings and workshops are available to add onto the full conference sessions pass for an additional cost.

Attendees registering for the conference will receive a free Jenkins certification exam voucher ($150 value) for the Certified Jenkins Engineer (CJE) or Certified CloudBees Jenkins Platform Engineer (CCJPE) exams. You can choose to sign up for an on-site exam at DevOps World Jenkins World (first come, first served) or use it at a later date. There are also several half-days, one- and two-day courses that can be added during the event registration process to help attendees prepare for certification.

Networking and Expo

Beyond the official sessions, there will be ample time to network with colleagues and check out the latest and greatest from industry vendors on the expo floor. Exhibitors include DevOps World’s showcase sponsor Google, premium sponsors Sonatype and VMware, and other sponsors such as GitKraken, Gradle, Honeycomb, Incredibuild, Mattermost, Instana, OverOps, Scalyr and Zebrium.

Awards

The DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019 Awards recognize the achievements of DevOps innovators and Jenkins practitioners around the globe, with two categories of awards announced during the conference: The Jenkins Community Awards, celebrating individual Jenkins community contributors, and the CloudBees Innovation Awards, honoring companies that demonstrate quantifiable business value from DevOps, CI and CD using CloudBees solutions.

Jenkins awards include honors such as Jenkins Security MVP, Most Valuable Jenkins Advocate and Most Innovative Jenkins X Implementation. CloudBees Innovation Awards include the DevOps Automation Excellence Award, the DevOps Scalability Achievement Award and DevOps Rising Star Award.

After-Party

Everyone who attends DevOps World | Jenkins World is a DevOps superhero. On the Wednesday night of the conference, grab your capes and masks to celebrate with the industry. Join us for our superhero-themed party!

Are you ready for this year’s show?

Learn more about DevOps World | Jenkins World. Then register and use code DWJW20 to get a 20% discount off your registration.

— Martha Samper

August 8, 2019
DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019: Sacha Labourey Q&A
CloudBees has been active on the acquisition front, picking up Electric Cloud and Rollout in recent months: Are we going to be talking about other deals by the time DevOps World Lisbon rolls around in December?

“We’re always actively looking at deals that make sense. To be truthful, we’ve set the bar pretty high at the moment. Not only are we focusing hard on executing on those acquisitions, we’re delivering on a vision we’ve laid out for the future in a category we call Software Delivery Management.”

What are you most looking forward to at DevOps World | Jenkins World 2019?

“Always the same: Meeting with great people, hearing about the great innovations in the Jenkins and Jenkins X community, and really, checking out everything all these talented companies are doing. The amount of creativity and innovation we see year after year at DevOps World | Jenkins World is truly amazing.”

How is CloudBees addressing gender and diversity at this year’s event?

“We have supported diversity at DevOps World | Jenkins World for a very long time. We’ve tried to encourage diversity in our recruitment of speakers and in our acceptance of them. Specific to this year’s conference, on the Wednesday of the conference week (August 14), CloudBees is sponsoring a Women In Tech mixer, as part of the conference activities. On Thursday, August 15, we’re sponsoring a Diversity and Inclusion luncheon. At the luncheon, a panel of speakers tackle the topic Connecting Diversity and Inclusion with Business Outcomes.

Outside of DevOps World | Jenkins World, here are some other ways we’ve been trying to be inclusive and supportive of diversity:
- CloudBees encourages diversity in our hiring. Our industry is heavily white male, but we are committed to achieving more diversity within the company. We’ve been benchmarking ourselves against the industry to see how we rank, relative to our peers. We are not satisfied with the results. We employ highly capable transgender, minority and culturally diverse people. We will continue to make this a priority.
- We are currently a customer of Power to Fly and are working with them to help attract more women into technical roles. We hosted a Women in Tech event in conjunction with Power to Fly in our Raleigh office on June 25.
- We have actively supported women in DevOps (as evidenced by the blog series on our website about Women in DevOps). We have had specific breakouts at company meetings and at past DevOps World conferences for Women in Tech.
- We have supported an internal team of women who applied to speak at the Grace Hopper conference. We are very proud that two have been accepted.
- Our Customer Advisory Board has increased female representation from two to six (out of about 30 total members).
As positive as this is, it’s not enough and we are not satisfied with our gains in diversity. We continue to focus on this important area.”

How has the evolution of DevOps World mirrored CloudBees’ growth?

“We’ve really witnessed it all since 2010 and before. We’ve been part of the first steps of CI, the move to the right and the quest for ever-increasing automation. We’ve seen the fantastic chain reaction where cloud has enabled organizations to do so much more in DevOps and DevOps has returned the favor, opening up so many opportunities for cloud. We are really witnessing the birth of a new tech era. It is a unique privilege for CloudBees to be part of that small group of change agents!”

One of the sessions talks about how to become a “DevOps superhero.” What is your personal DevOps superpower?

“That’s easy: open source. After years in the JBoss community, at Red Hat and now at CloudBees, where we are the leads on the Jenkins and Jenkins X projects, I still love open source. It is part of our DNA here at CloudBees. There is so much innovation going on in the open source communities, and the developers who are involved are so passionate about what they do. I do think, for the most part, open source developers are among the best in the developer community. They are also inclusive and really have a desire to impact the world.”

— Heidi Gilmore
August 6, 2019