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Category: Features

  • VMware Enhances Management Portfolio

    VMware Enhances Management Portfolio

    VMware today rolled out a series of updates to its automation and monitoring portfolio as part of an ongoing effort to simplify management of highly distributed IT environments.

    Updates to the VMware vRealize Cloud automation portfolio include VMware vRealize Automation 8.4’s tighter integration with the open source Salt automation framework the company gained by acquiring SaltStack last year, in addition to a range of tools for provisioning and governing instances of VMware software running on Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and VMware Cloud on Amazon Web Services (AWS).

    There is also a set of tools to enable organizations running NSX network virtualization software for vSphere to migrate to NSX-T, an instance of network virtualization software that can be deployed anywhere.

    VMware vRealize Operations, meanwhile, is being updated to support a total of 57 AWS services along with the ability to predict the cost of deploying VMware Cloud on AWS. The latter capability includes tracking potential savings generated by powering off idle or unused virtual machines as well as snapshots, orphaned disks and oversized virtual machines. There are also now ten additional dashboards for tracking various costs, including return on investment, total cost of ownership and potential cost savings. IT teams can also more easily track capacity utilization trends on AWS.

    VMware is adding support for the open source Telegraf Agent to enable IT teams to collect metrics from any platform, in addition to providing an update to VMware vRealize Log Insight 8.4 and vRealize Log Insight Cloud that enables these monitoring tools to store data collected from multiple cloud services more efficiently. IT teams will also be able to collect logs from both Microsoft Azure and AWS.

    Finally, VMware is expanding its network monitoring tools to provide greater visibility across multiple clouds.

    Fidelma Russo, senior vice president and general manager for cloud services at VMware, said the rate at which IT teams are consuming the software-as-a-service (SaaS) editions of VMware management and observability tools or full-blown managed services has increased sharply since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as IT teams managed on-premises and cloud instances of VMware software from home.

    It’s not clear what percentage of VMware’s installed base are now consuming the company’s automation and monitoring tools, but as the number of VMware instances deployed on public clouds increases alongside on-premises IT environments, so, too, do the management challenges. The choice IT teams generally have to make is deciding between automation and observability tools that are optimized for a specific platform versus adopting frameworks that work more broadly. With the acquisition of Salt and support for Telgraf, it is apparent VMware is moving to expand the reach of its management portfolio beyond its own software.

    In the meantime, IT teams are not only being asked to manage more complex IT environments, but the expectation that, through automation, they will be able to more effectively implement cost controls. This is happening at a time when many organizations have not been quite so sensitive to the total cost of IT. The challenge, of course, is those organizations are being asked to spend money on automation today in the hopes of spending less because of it tomorrow.

  • IBM Deepens DevOps Insights on Mainframes

    IBM Deepens DevOps Insights on Mainframes

    IBM today extended its effort to enable IT organizations that have mainframes to embrace DevOps best practices by updating the analytics tools it provides.

    Tom McPherson, vice president for IBM Z Software, said a version 6.0 update to the suite of IBM application discovery and delivery intelligence (ADDI) for IBM Z tools surfaces more granular insights by leveraging a new version of Wazi Analyze that now analyzes code immediately after a change is made. That capability is critical, because most of the workloads running on a mainframe are highly tuned. Any issue that is likely to occur can usually be traced directly back to the latest software update made to the environment, McPherson said.

     

    Wazi Analyze also can now be deployed as a set of containers, which McPherson said means IT teams can opt to run the analytics application on a platform other than the mainframe.

    ADDI also has been updated to improve Assembler support by making it easier to analyze multi-level dynamic assembler macro calls. A set of application programming interfaces (APIs) for feeding that data back to a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline has also been added.

    Finally, IBM revealed it signed a licensing agreement with ITP Software Systeme GmbH, Munich (ITP) to enhance application analytics capabilities. That capability will be added to a future release of DevOps for IBM Z Hybrid Cloud, which includes ADDI and IBM Wazi Developer, to enable organizations to determine how best to modernize legacy monolithic applications as they transition to a microservices-based, cloud-native computing environment.

    Naturally, not every monolithic application is going to be converted into a series of microservices. However, McPherson said, it’s clear there is a need for analytics tools that will enable IT teams to more easily determine which elements of an application are better suited to being reconfigured as microservices that could be deployed on, for example, a Red Hat OpenShift cluster.

    For the last several years, IBM has been encouraging IT organizations that have mainframes to embrace DevOps best practices as part of a larger effort to position mainframes as another type of distributed computing platform. The overall goal is to lower the total cost of mainframe ownership by reducing the need to rely on specialists to manage mainframe application environments. Each year, more of those specialists retire. IBM wants to make it more feasible for organizations to replace those specialists with IT generalists, like those that typically manage distributed computing environments. At the same time, management of distributed computing environments is becoming more automated, thanks to the rise of DevOps.

    Of course, mainframe processes have been highly automated for decades. IT teams managing mainframes may still rely primarily on waterfall-based processes to deploy applications, but the underling infrastructure is designed to scale up and down on demand as application workloads require. Convincing IT teams that, for decades, have employed the same processes to manage mainframes often requires a significant amount of cultural change.

    Regardless of motivation, however, the winds of DevOps change are now blowing through mainframe environments just as fiercely as they have through the rest of IT.

  • ServiceNow Adds Low-Code Tool to Platform

    ServiceNow Adds Low-Code Tool to Platform

    ServiceNow today made available an update, dubbed Quebec, to its Now platform that adds a set of low-code application development tools.

    Marcus Torres, general manager for IntegrationHub and vice president of platform product management at ServiceNow, said the Creator Workflows tool leverages existing App Engine and IntegrationHub capabilities in the platform to make it possible for both end users and professional developers to build custom applications faster using a visual development tool dubbed App Engine Studio. A set of templates that provide a set of pre-built workflows is also included.

    The goal is to make it easier to develop applications that would otherwise not be built because professional developers, using existing tools, would simply not have the time, Torres said.

    The Quebec release of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform is also used for IT operations management (ITOM), adding artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in the form of ITOM Predictive AIOps that surfaces potential issues before they become a major issue. It is now also easier to set up the virtual agents that ServiceNow makes available to enable conversational AI, and there is now an AI search capability built into the ServiceNow portal. ServiceNow gained these capabilities via its recent acquisitions of Loom Systems and Attivio.

    Finally, ServiceNow has added process optimization and workforce optimization modules, along with an engagement messenger module that extends the self-service capabilities it provides to third-party portals, and a universal request tool that enables agents to collaborate and transfer tickets across departments while keeping employees informed of the status of their ticket.

    Thanks to the general enthusiasm for digital business transformation initiatives being accelerated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, reliance on low-code tools to build applications has significantly increased. The challenge organizations encounter, however, is that a low-code tool can build a relatively simple application. However, development means may need to drop down to a lower level of abstraction to address more complex issues as an application continues to evolve. The Creator Workflows tool from ServiceNow is designed to provide development teams with that option.

    In general, ServiceNow is making a case for building applications on the same platform that many IT organizations already employ to manage IT. Many organizations already take advantage of workflows that ServiceNow has built to extend its core platform to address a wide range of uses cases involving, for example, human resources applications. The addition of the low-code tool will make it easier for IT teams to create applications that address use cases unique to their organization.

    Of course, there is no shortage of options when it comes to low-code and no-code tools these days. IT teams will need to decide to what degree platform-specific low-code tools make sense versus adopting low-code tools that enable them to build applications that can be deployed anywhere. Regardless of the path forward, however, it’s clear the number of applications that need to be deployed is dramatically increasing with each passing day.

  • The Importance of Incorporating DesignOps Into DevOps

    The Importance of Incorporating DesignOps Into DevOps

    Design is a critical software project element that often goes unnoticed by those writing code. After all, coders and implementers tend to take the design process for granted and leave the look and feel of applications to the designers. In the days of waterfall based development, design was one of the first steps in the development sequence of creating a new application. However, with Agile and DevOps development practices, design became disconnected from the overall process.

    “If you look at the full spectrum of AppDev, it becomes obvious that there are many elements that should be part of DevOps. Take, for example, cyber – today, there is a movement to integrate cyber into the DevOps pipeline, which the industry has started to call DevSecOps,” said Mark Troester, VP of strategy at Progress, a software company offering tools for developers and IT. “To make design a part of the iterative process of DevOps, teams need to think about including designers during the complete development process, something along the lines of how cyber has become part of the iterative process. In other words, teams should be embracing the concept of DesignOps,” Troester said.

    To understand the challenges this creates for those looking to include design as part of the DevOps process, one only needs to look at how design, specifically user experience/customer experience (UX/CX) design, was done in the past. Designers would use tools such as InVision Studio, Axure, Proto.IO, Adobe XD, or one of the many other tools available, to prototype the look and feel of an application, or, more specifically, the end-user experience. The term DesignOps was coined to encapsulate the processes around design. However, DesignOps solely focused on the process of design, such as design workflows, design tools, design governance, team management, budgets and so on. 

    The ultimate goal of DesignOps was design creation; that design was then passed on to those who would write the code and develop the logic to bring that design to fruition in the form of an application. DesignOps worked rather well when an organization was adhering to waterfall development methodologies, where each step was clearly defined and the goal was to deliver a complete, finalized application to those requesting it.

    “Larger organizations were able to field large design teams and could afford to implement a complete design system. When you have 50 or more designers, a complete design system becomes critical to manage design,” said Troester. “However, as AppDev has evolved into a more agile process, especially under DevOps, the disconnect between design and development became a significant problem.”

    What Troester is alluding to is the reiterative development cycle used by DevOps teams, where applications are delivered in pieces and then further modified based on user feedback or business operational changes. Businesses today are embracing agile concepts, so they can react much faster to changing market conditions. This, in turn, means modifying applications as quickly as possible to maintain a competitive advantage. Currently, design remains somewhat siloed, and can become a bottleneck for implementing changes if the UX/CX must be modified to address those needed changes. 

    “With the rise of DevOps, teams need to start thinking of reiterative processes, where DesignOps integrates with the DevOps team, so there is collaboration between the designers and the developers, allowing design changes to happen quickly,” Troester said. “Yet, there are still remaining challenges – some created by the COVID-19 crisis – where designers and developers may not even be in the same building, much less the same time zone,” he said.

    To Troester’s point, the COVID-19 crisis has forced businesses to evolve in ways that were once thought impossible. Developers, designers and even operations teams and individuals may no longer be sharing office space, and might be distributed across multiple locations. That complication will drive the need for better collaboration tools that bring design into the DevOps cycle.

    “DevOps teams, as well as DesignOps teams, should be looking into technologies that can bridge the designer/developer divide. It will be critical in the near future to facilitate collaboration between design and development,” Troester said. “Perhaps, the answer lies with building some type of bi-directional API into design systems, which can play a key role in the implementation and support of design-first experiences,” he added.

    Existing solutions to the current divide seem to be few and far between. But, that does not mean DesignOps and DevOps teams should not be currently looking for a solution to what will become a major problem as DevOps accelerates in the enterprise.                  

  • LinearB Raises $16M for Software Delivery Intelligence

    LinearB Raises $16M for Software Delivery Intelligence

    LinearB announced today it has raised an additional $16 million in funding to advance adoption of a software delivery intelligence platform.

    Ori Keren, LinearB CEO, said rather than relying on antiquated processes that require software development teams to track progress by reentering data into a project management application, it’s now possible to automatically collect all the relevant data required from the tools and platforms being employed to build software.

    The LinearB platform correlates DevOps pipeline data gathered from code, Git, projects and releases to provide visibility and context to every member of the development team. LinearB employs machine learning algorithms to construct and correlate that data, in real-time, to provide accurate insights into project status. That’s critical, because it empowers every individual on that team to make informed decisions about which tasks to prioritize without waiting for an explicit directive, Keren said.

    LinearB will, in part, use the funding to build integrations with a wider range of DevOps platforms and tools, Keren added.

    Software delivery intelligence differs from value stream management (VSM) platforms; though they provide similar insights, those surfaced by LinearB are aimed at developers rather than C-level executives trying to optimize deployment of limited resources across multiple teams, said Keren. In many ways, the data collected by LinearB could be employed to better inform a VSM platform, Keren added.

    LinearB, in contrast, makes it easier to identify which teams and projects need additional help in near-real-time using metrics surfaced in a dashboard that track, for example, cycle times. The goal is to provide insights that make it easier to predict and eliminate project delays, remediate high-risk code before it is included in a production environment, eliminate bottlenecks and make certain the focus of the DevOps team remains on tasks of the highest priority.

    More than 1,500 software development teams are already using LinearB as an alternative to traditional project management applications. Most of those customers are building commercial applications, so the goal now is to extend the reach of LinearB into the enterprise, said Keren.

    LinearB, of course, doesn’t eliminate the need for project managers. However, it does eliminate the need for project managers to nag developers to update a project management application. Given the rate at which application development projects are now updated, much of the data in a project management application is outdated shortly after it is entered.

    There’s a lot of pressure on application development teams these days. Many projects have been accelerated as part of an effort to more rapidly embrace digital business transformation in the wake of the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge for many developers is they, too, are working from home to help combat the spread of the virus. That often results in interactions with managers over video conferencing calls that lack context. Having access to a software development intelligence platform should enable everyone with a vested interest in application deployment speed to make more informed decisions faster.

  • Linux Foundation Project Secures Software Supply Chains

    Linux Foundation Project Secures Software Supply Chains

    The Linux Foundation today embraced a sigstore project founded by Red Hat, Google and Purdue University to make it simpler for developers to employ cryptographic software, enabled by transparency log technologies, to secure software supply chains.

    Luke Hinds, security engineering lead in the office of the CTO at Red Hat, said he and Dan Lorenc, a staff software engineer for Google, led a small team creating a lightweight mechanism for signing software artifacts, such as release files, container images and binaries, in way that creates an immutable, tamper-proof log.

    Now, the goal is to take that project to the next level by contributing it to the Linux Foundation, at a time when the focus on software supply chain security has increased in the wake of a spate of high-profile breaches. As part of that effort, a free service, based on sigstore, will also be made available by the Linux Foundation to make the cryptographic software easily accessible to a wide range of developers.

    Hinds said one of the reasons that artifacts are not signed by developers is that the current processes employed are too cumbersome. The cryptographic software is designed to be integrated as an extension of existing workflows, Hinds noted.

    Because the log created is immutable, everyone participating in the software development process, including auditors, can now transparently track chain of custody for any software artifact, Hinds said. At its core, sigstore creates a set of short-lived ephemeral keys with a trust root based on an auditable public log.

    Existing approaches rely on digests stored on insecure systems that are susceptible to tampering. Cybercriminals can, for example, swap out digests if they can gain access to compromised credentials. Those types of targeted attacks can be thwarted using sigstore, because the log management system that underpins it is immutable, said Hinds.

    Of course, no system for securing software supply chains is going to be useful if developers won’t employ it. Key management, key compromise/revocation and the distribution of public keys and artifact digests are challenging to manage. Developers, then, need to determine which keys to trust in addition to learning how to sign them when different platforms are employed. Digests and public keys are also often distributed across vulnerable websites susceptible to hacks, or stored as a README file on a public git repository.

    As organizations embrace DevSecOps best practices, it’s only a matter of time before the entire software supply chain comes under greater scrutiny. Ultimately, the issue will come down to finding a way to secure those supply chains, either from the top down by deploying and maintaining a platform, or simply making it easier for developers to better secure artifacts from the bottom up.

    Regardless of approach, the signing of software artifacts should, one way or another, become more routine in the weeks and months ahead. The biggest challenge will be overcoming the simple inertia that currently exists among developers who routinely ignore the whole process.

  • GitGuardian Reports Careless Handling of Application Secrets

    GitGuardian Reports Careless Handling of Application Secrets

    A new report, the 2021 State of Secrets Sprawl on GitHub, published today by GitGuardian, a provider of a tool for monitoring usage of application secrets, suggests developers are not especially good at keeping those secrets safe.

    Based on an analysis of every single commit made to GitHub, the report finds there has been a 20% year-over-year increase in the number of secrets – such as application programming interface (API) keys, private keys, certificates, usernames and passwords –  discovered on a public repository.

    Developers, as they build an application, make secrets easily accessible as plain text for the sake of convenience. However, when those applications are deployed in a production environment, developers often forget to delete the secrets they stored in GitHub.

    GitGuardian CEO Jeremey Thomas noted that cybercriminals are now actively scanning repositories looking for secrets that would enable them to compromise applications.

    As the number of application development projects being launched increased, so too did the number of application secrets being stored in repositories like GitHub. The GitGuardian report notes 60 million repositories were created in the last year, representing a 35% increase over the previous year. GitGuardian claims it detected more than 5,000 application secrets per day. Most of those secrets have been detected in repositories that belong to developers (85%), while the other 15% belonged to organizations. The top four countries where secrets were disclosed were India, Brazil, the United States and Nigeria.

    GitGuardian also notes it sent out 937,539 pro bono alerts to 558,086 developers last year that informed developers that application secrets were exposed. The mean time for GitGuardian’s algorithm to detect a leak is four seconds. The average mean time to response of a developer when informed of the issues is about 25 minutes, the report noted.

    As a best practice, GitGuardian recommends not storing unencrypted secrets in git repositories, and that unencrypted secrets should never be shared via messaging systems like Slack. DevOps teams should also restrict API access and permissions.

    As more attention is paid to how software supply chains are managed in the wake of some recent, high-profile breaches, there is no doubt the number of audits conducted will increase. Many of those auditors will specifically be trying to ascertain how application secrets are being managed. Developers may have to get used to a new, higher level of scrutiny, especially as DevSecOps practices become more widely adopted.

    In the meantime, DevOps teams may want to review their dependency on public repositories. There are plenty of private repository options that provide most of the same source code sharing capabilities as a public repository. That may mean someone on the DevOps team is required to manage the private repository, but, given the fact that many regulatory bodies will soon be looking to make an example of organizations that don’t secure application secrets, chances are good those costs will be trivial compared to a fine that would be levied.

  • Kong Integrates Service Mesh with OPA

    Kong Integrates Service Mesh with OPA

    Kong, Inc. today announced an update to Kong Mesh, built on top of open source Kuma service mesh, that adds support for Open Policy Agent (OPA) software that enables DevOps teams to manage compliance as code.

    Kuma and OPA are both being developed under the auspices of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Kuma, unlike other service mesh offerings, provides connectivity across both microservices-based applications running on Kubernetes platform and monolithic applications deployed on virtual machines.

    In addition to adding support for OPA, the 1.2 release of Kong Mesh adds authentication mechanisms between the global and remote control planes operating across multiple zones. That functionality extends the Kuma Discovery Service (KDS) to support multiple authentication mechanisms.

    Finally, Kong has added support for the federal information processing standard (FIPS).

    Like the Istio service mesh, advanced by Google and IBM for Kubernetes environments, Kuma is based on open source Envoy proxy software. In contrast, however, Kuma is both lighter-weight and designed to span both cloud-native and legacy application environments.

    Marco Palladino, CTO at Kong, said OPA support will be a significant advance for both classes of workloads as organizations start to employ Kuma within the context of zero-trust computing environments. As DevSecOps processes are extended to include managing compliance as code, OPA will provide a programmable mechanism for ensuring that policies are not only properly implemented, but can also be easily audited, Palladino said.

    In general, an effort led by Kong, VMware and others to elevate the service mesh conversations to more broadly address application connectivity is underway. A service mesh, at its core, provides the means for integrating hundreds of application programming interfaces (APIs) at scale. It also provides a level of abstraction above the network layer that makes it easier to connect applications across a heterogeneous networking environment.

    Kong is making a case for a lighter-weight approach that spans multiple platforms and is highly extensible. As such, third-party vendors and IT teams can add extensions to Kuma as they see fit.

    Ultimately, Palladino said, the time has come to take cloud computing to the next level. If all organizations wind up doing is lifting and shifting monolithic applications to public clouds, an opportunity to advance the state of IT will have been lost.

    Of course, it’s still early days as far as adoption of service meshes are concerned. Most organizations today are relying on API gateways, proxy software or ingress controllers to manage APIs. It’s not clear to what degree a service mesh may remove the need for some of that existing application connectivity middleware.

    Regardless of which approach is ultimately favored, it’s apparent that, as microservices-based applications become more widely deployed, a different approach to application connectivity will be required. Monolithic applications, however, are not going away. In some cases, a monolithic application might be carved up into a smaller set of microservices, but it’s unlikely that every existing monolithic application will lend itself to that architecture any time soon.

  • Despite the Pandemic, DevOps Salaries Rose in 2020

    Despite the Pandemic, DevOps Salaries Rose in 2020

    Puppet today published the results of an annual global DevOps survey that found, despite the downturn in the global economy brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, most DevOps professionals saw their salaries rise in 2020.

    However, for the first time since Puppet started collecting this data, DevOps professionals working in the life sciences, health care and pharmaceutical sectors, on average, made more than those working in the financial services sector. Not surprisingly, the report also found that DevOps professionals working in the U.S. made more than their global counterparts.

    Nearly two-thirds of respondents in the life sciences, health care and pharmaceutical sectors earn more than $100,000. That compares to 53% in the financial services sector and 45% of those working for technology companies.

    The survey was based on responses from 2,243 DevOps professionals, and noted that organizations with highly evolved DevOps practices pay better than those that are less evolved. Among respondents working at highly evolved companies, 80% earn $75,000 per year or more. That compares to 57% that earn as much at less evolved companies. Much of that discrepancy is attributable to DevOps managers that make much more at highly evolved companies compared to their counterparts at less-evolved companies, the report noted. Two‑thirds of practitioners make less than $100,000 per year, the survey found. In general, respondents working at companies with revenue over $1 billion had the highest percentage of those earning $150,000 to $250,000 (22%).

    The largest percentage increases in salaries among DevOps professionals occurred in Japan and the United Kingdom (UK). Salaries, on average, did not rise in Singapore, Germany, New Zealand and Australia. In the U.S., the demographic that saw the most growth was among DevOps professionals earning between $150,000 to $250,000, most of whom are managers. More than half of all DevOps managers in the U.S. fall within this salary range, the report noted.

    The Puppet report also noted that DevOps professionals working in dedicated engineering and application development tend to make more than those that are part of a larger IT team. A third of respondents in engineering or development report salaries over $125,000 per year, compared to 22% percent in IT and 15% percent in information security.

    The Puppet report also showed a divergence between what men and women earn as salary ranges increase. For both men and women earning up to $75,000 a year, salaries are similar. Between $100,000 and $125,000, women actually earn more. However, at $125,000, men (28%) earn more than women (17%). The survey, however, does not mention the experience levels of any respondents.

    It’s also not clear whether the higher salaries among DevOps professionals found in the life sciences, health care and pharmaceutical sectors represent a fundamental shift, or is an aberration based on the amount of COVID-19 research being conducted.

    Alanna Brown, a senior director of marketing for Puppet, said the one thing that COVID-19 has changed forever is that competition for DevOps expertise is now global. Organizations are no longer limiting themselves to hiring individuals within 50 miles of their office. In fact, DevOps professionals that have shown they can successfully work remotely will, in the months and years ahead, be in greater demand than those that have only worked in an office setting, Brown predicted. Organizations of all sizes are trying to reduce their commercial real estate expenses, Brown added.

    In the meantime, the most important thing for IT professionals is to stay relevant. Site reliability engineers (SREs) with certified programming skills will make more than a traditional IT administrator. It’s up to each IT professional to make sure they have the skills that are highest in demand at a time when many IT functions are being ruthless automated by increasing numbers of DevOps professionals.

  • How Open Source Software Powers Digital Innovation

    How Open Source Software Powers Digital Innovation

    Open source has permanently altered how we work and conduct business. Linux, and thousands of other open source projects and open standards, now dominate the software landscape, supporting emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and edge computing. Without open source, the DevOps tooling ecosystem would lack Docker, Kubernetes, service mesh, popular databases, and many CI/CD tools used by DevOps teams daily.

    Now, more than ever, companies are searching for ways to meet escalating user demands. The pandemic has amplified this urgency, accelerating existing digital transformation initiatives. Arguably, open source is the engine that now powers the digital innovation required to compete. Leveraging open source could also help check rising cloud costs. With proprietary solutions falling out of favor, many enterprise leaders are adopting open source alternatives for infrastructure modernization and application development.

    Red Hat recently released its third annual State of Enterprise Open Source report. The report surveyed 1,250 IT leaders worldwide on their open source adoption and usage patterns. The findings validate what most of us already know — open source is now fundamental to most technology stacks. Without it, most development projects would fall flat in an instant.

    Open Source Use Cases

    Open source is at the heart of modern software development. According to the report, 90% of enterprise IT leaders are using open source. So, where is open source being applied? Well, 64% of enterprises use open source software for IT infrastructure modernization. The report surmised that this could be due to Linux and open source infrastructure replacing proprietary systems.

    The report also found 54% of enterprises use open source for application development. This is no surprise, as engineers routinely adopt open source libraries and packages to construct B2B and user-facing experiences. In a digital-only environment, applications are the lifeblood for many businesses, and open source is critical scaffolding.

    The third top use case for enterprise open source is digital transformation, at 53%. This figure has increased by 11 percentage points in the last two years alone. Open source will likely continue to replace non-digital or manual processes with software-based, automated processes.

    In the enterprise, open source is used in networking, adopted by 54% of enterprises, databases, at 53% and security, at 52%. Other areas mentioned in the report include big data analytics and cloud management tools.

    In recent years, multi-cloud has become a notable trend. The idea is that organizations will seek out multiple cloud vendors to support different use cases. The Red Hat report confirmed that hypothesis, finding that 69% of respondents prefer to use multiple vendors for their cloud. As hybrid, multi-cloud setups profligate, cloud expertise and smart multi-cloud economic practices continue to gain importance.

    Containers and K8s

    Open source components are the foundation for containers and container management utilities. As reliance on containers grows, so will the dependence on open source technology. The report found just under half of enterprises now use containers in production. An additional 37% also use containers for development-only purposes.

    To orchestrate these containers, IT teams have coalesced around Kubernetes. Sixty-six percent of respondents view Kubernetes as very or extremely important. As Kubernetes becomes ubiquitous, growth in container usage is slated to continue — about one in three respondents reported their container usage will increase significantly in the next 12 months.

    “Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for Linux container development,” said Michael Hinterland, team lead, ICS cloud & automation and ICS system & middleware, Porsche Informatik.

    While Kubernetes is flourishing, there are certainly variances across industries. For example, 62% of financial services and telecommunications respondents adopted containers in production, while other sectors, such as health care and retail, saw a lower adoption of containers in production, at 47% and 50%, respectively. The highly-regulated financial services sector also scored high on Database DevOps, a separate report recently concluded.

    Open Source Benefits and Barriers

    There are numerous benefits to using enterprise open source software. For one, a commitment to open source brings transparency and collaboration improvements. Respondents also cited higher quality software, access to the latest innovations and improved security as being among the top benefits to adopting open source software.

    But open source has its drawbacks, too; 42% of tech leaders reported a lack of support as a top hurdle to enterprise open source adoption. This checks out – community-driven projects don’t typically offer traditional support systems. Without accessible frameworks for learning, creating a Center of Excellence at scale becomes difficult.

    Other top barriers to enterprise open source adoption include compatibility, code security and a lack of internal skills. Introducing open source within an enterprise means upskilling the workforce and encouraging secure-by-default settings to avoid costly misconfigurations. It could also mean working with trusted allies that further open source initiatives, the report recommended.

    Open Source Fuels Emerging Tech

    “Open source has solidified itself as an innovation engine for the software industry,” wrote Paul Cormier, president and CEO, Red Hat.

    Indeed, open source is at the heart of most cutting-edge emerging technologies. For example, 55% of respondents report using enterprise open source in edge computing and internet of things (IoT) settings. Simultaneously, 48% of respondents use open source for artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). Amid open source projects like OpenAI and GPT–3, AI is eating the software world, Forbes reported.

    Both categories are slated to increase by nearly 20 percentage points in the next two years, whereas the use of proprietary solutions for AI/ML will decrease. Open source will continue to affect buying decisions, as 83% of IT leaders are more likely to choose a vendor that has contributed to the open source community.

    Within a COVID-19-influenced world, “the problems are too big for one person, one company or one organization to solve,” said Cormier. “But it’s in moments like this where open source truly shows its power.”