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Category: Features

Modern Software Development Helps KPI Achievement
A new survey by Frost & Sullivan in collaboration with CA Technologies clearly shows that business executives believe modern software development helps them achieve KPIs. This is the latest in a string of surveys showing that modern software development practices such as DevOps result in higher-performing organizations, more profits and greater KPI achievement.

Key findings of the survey show that organizations with more mature programs are:
- Eight times more likely to declare that applications are very good at supporting the achievement of
  business KPIs;
- Seven times more likely to say their apps are completely integrated to enable functionality, data
  sharing, authentication and security; and
- Able to achieve two times’ higher profit growth.
Ashok Reddy, GM DevOps CA Techologies

I spoke with Ashok Reddy, Group GM, DevOps at CA Technologies about the findings. In addition to the key findings above, Reddy emphasized another key point: The survey showed that in organizations with modern software development programs, business executives outside of IT are key software decision-makers.

Traditionally, IT was viewed as servicing the rest of the organization as their customer. A key constituency of this customer base would seem to be non-IT business executives. They recognize that software and applications are so important to achieving KPIs. They are moving beyond just being a customer of IT to actually being involved in the software development process itself, according to Reddy.

Some Troubling Findings

Not all of the findings from the survey are rosy, though. Pressure to release software endangers quality and security, according to 69 percent of the business executives surveyed. More than two-thirds of respondents said that security is sometimes overlooked to expedite development. Software issues negatively impacting KPIs was cited by more than half of the respondents.

With modern software development practices becoming so important, the findings above seem logical—logical, perhaps, but not acceptable. We must continue to strive to make security a more organic part of the software development process. Security concerns cannot continue to be overlooked because they are a drag on software development. One of the key points that I believe about DevOps and modern software development is that you can have more velocity, speed and security by following these practices.

All in all, this survey is yet another brick in the wall showing that organizations around the world adopting modern software development practices such as DevOps, Agile, etc., are outperforming their competitors who don’t. It is quickly becoming a case of DevOps or die.

— Alan Shimel
October 15, 2018
DevOps World | Jenkins World 2018 San Francisco: Video Interviews, Day 2

The recent DevOps World | Jenkins World 2018 San Francisco conference offered a bevy of interesting conversations with folks from all corners of the DevOps space, from testing to automation to security and beyond. All of those conversations are available for viewing on DevOpsTV.

My two days in the Broadcast Booth on the show floor at the conference was busy, busy, as a number of attendees stopped by for a quick chat with Jayne Groll, CEO of DevOps Institute, or me. Topics ranged from the growing influence of artificial intelligence to the importance of testing and DevSecOps. Below is a recap of the Day 2 video interviews (Day 1’s recap is available for viewing here):

Contrast Security Discusses DevSecOps

Mahesh Babu of Contrast Security stopped by to discuss his company’s technology, which helps an app protect itself through agents that constantly monitor the code to see in real time any problems within the application.

Smart Bear Talks AI and Testing

Daniel Giordano of SmartBear chatted with us about how his company is using artificial intelligence technology in its testing products to test things beyond objects such as images and charts.

Perfecto’s Kinsbruner Debuts Continuous Testing Book

Eran Kinsbruner of Perfecto talked with us about the launch of his book, “Continuous Testing for DevOps,” which he wrote in conjunction with CloudBees.

JFrog Offers Take on DevOps Culture

Baruch Sadogursky of JFrog discussed the challenges in DevOps with respect to culture and ways companies are finding ways to make the cultural change.

Electric Cloud Offers Technology Update

Electric Cloud’s Sam Fell stopped by the Broadcast Booth and offered up an update on the company’s technology stack and its potential impact on the development environment.

IT Methods Talks Cloud Adoption

Paul Goldman of ITMethods talked with us about the evolution from on-premises to cloud deployments and the various reasons why organizations are making the change.

Go2Group Offers Service Provider Perspective

Mike Maheu of services provider Go2Group discussed the trends his company is seeing regarding organizations that are undergoing DevOps adoption, including the tooling and practices.

Services Provider Zivra Talks DevOps’ Global Impact

JJ Alvarez of Zivra, CloudBees’ Partner of the Year, talked with us about the global expansion of DevOps and the recent surge of Latin American and South American countries adopting DevOps principles.

SauceLabs Talks Testing and Security

Clint Sprauve from SauceLabs stopped by to discuss the correlation between testing and security in DevOps as companies struggle to maintain quality in their application development process.

Releasing the Gitcracken

James Quigley of Gitcracken talked with us about the role of his company in helping developers improve their coding performance and productivity and increase the comfort level of less-experienced developers.

Twistlock Talks Kubernetes

Matthew Barker of Twistlock discussed the impact of Kubernetes on application development and trends he’s seeing in the Kubernetes space as a whole.

Pivotal’s Approach to DevOps

Pivotal’s Nima Badiey schooled me on his title and chatted about how his organization approaches DevOps with its customers, especially large enterprise companies that have legacy systems and mindsets.

NowSecure Talks Mobile Development

NowSecure Chief Mobility Officer Brian Reed discussed trends in the mobility space, including the use of mobile app projects as a “gateway to DevOps.”

— Charlene O’Hanlon

October 12, 2018
DevOps Chat: All Day DevOps Preview

All Day DevOps, the virtual event featuring more than 100 sessions from practitioners around the world, is happening very soon. Now in its third year, this year’s event will take place Wednesday, Oct. 17, starting at 3 a.m. Eastern. But if you don’t feel like getting up, each 30-minute session will be available on demand as well.

In this DevOps Chat, All Day DevOps founders Derek Weeks and Mark Miller, both also from Sonatype, offer a preview of what’s in store during this year’s virtual event, which is free to attend.

As usual, the streaming audio is immediately below, followed by the transcript of our conversation.

Audio

Transcript

Alan Shimel: Hey, everyone. It’s Alan Shimel, DevOps.com, and you’re listening to another DevOps Chat. Really happy to have two friends of mine join us on the chat today. We have none other – those crazy guys from All Day DevOps and Sonatype, Derek Weeks and Mark Miller. Mark, Derek, welcome to DevOps Chat.

Mark Miller: Thanks, Alan.

Derek Weeks: It’s good to be here. Always happy to chat with you.

Shimel: Yeah.

Miller: Thank you, Alan. Welcome to New York, welcome back home.

Shimel: Yeah, it’s good to be home. So Mark, you know, this is an audio only, people don’t know, but you have a Fighting Okra hat on, is that correct?

Miller: You know, some of my followers from around the United States are sending me hats and right now the Delta State Fighting Okras have sent me a hat so I’m gonna be giving them a good callout during All Day DevOps. Derek, you haven’t seen this one yet.

Weeks: No, I haven’t. That’s pretty cool-looking.

Shimel: All right, a shout out to the Fighting Okras.

[Laughter]

But Mark, you mentioned All Day DevOps. We’re getting close, right? What’s the date?

Miller: We’re next – we’re gonna be on Wednesday, October 17, and as we looked at this morning, as we looked at it, we’re over 19,000 registrations this morning. Once again, the community has gotten behind it. Derek, you’ve got a bigger hand on it, too. You’ve got some ideas about what’s going on with the viewing parties even, right?

Weeks: Yeah, I think the – you know, we’re at 19,000, I think we’re easily headed over 30,000 by the time we get to the conference, and I think part of that is what we’ve seen with the viewing parties this year. So, you know, it’s an interesting kind of evolution of the conference where we started this thing as, hey, let’s have this virtual conference so that everyone can attend wherever they sit, and then people said, “You know, I want to participate but have others in my company or my community participate as well, so we’re just gonna gather in a place to have this viewing party.” In the first year that we did it there might’ve been 10 because it wasn’t a formalized thing. Last year we kind of encouraged people to do it but didn’t have anything on the site that really mentioned it too much, and I think we had 35 viewing parties.

This year we have 115 viewing parties that have registered in 24 countries, and the interesting thing is not only has that changed the conference and how it evolves and how people share this education within groups but we’ve heard some amazing stories just come out of this community where organizations like RBC in Toronto, they’re planning for up to 1,400 people in RBC to attend their viewing party. State Farm in Dallas has 500 people that they’re planning in their viewing party. National –

Miller: They went up to over 800 this weekend.

Weeks: Yeah. National Australia Bank; you know, they’re planning, I think, 250 people in their viewing party. And when you think about the size of some DevOps conference that all three of us have been to, anyone having 500 people at a DevOps conference has a successful DevOps conference. The fact that one company, you know, is setting up a viewing party just for our conference that’s as large as some DevOps conferences out there it’s pretty interesting. But, you know, the same point – and this is a conversation I had with someone this morning in Munich, he said – you know, we’ll get into talking about Club 20 – but he said, “Hey, do we have 20 people registered yet because we want to get our company into Club 20,” and I hadn’t heard of this organization really before.

And I looked; they had 16 people. Now they actually have 20 so they’ll make the list. But I said, “I’m curious; how many people in your organization could attend All Day DevOps that, you know, are DevOps practitioners?” And he said, “You know, like I want to get on the Club 20 list, but I think we could get 100 people at our viewing party and in a perfect world we could have 1,000 people participate in All Day DevOps.” And that – you know, Mark, as we started this whole thing, that was really the aim, like how do you get to those 1,000 people and give them some free education?

Miller: Yeah. One of the topics that you just touched on – and you and I talked this morning too as we were putting together how our day was gonna go – Alan, when you think about it, can you imagine 20 people showing up at a live conference? I mean think about that. If you get four or five people at a live conference from one company you’re blowing out the budget, right, already. In this case, we can literally allow dozens and dozens of people from the same company to attend 120 sessions in a live conference. It’s a pretty phenomenal way to look at it.

Shimel: And, you know, so one way of looking at it, Mark, is wow, what would the cost be to fly in a dozen, two dozen, three dozen people to a physical conference? The other thing, you know, to make it a truly win-win is what are the benefits of a team that size sharing that common experience, right? It’s almost priceless, right? It’s like the MasterCard commercial: $45 for the conference ticket, $60 on Uber, $20 on lunch. Sharing it as a team? Priceless.

Miller: Yeah.

Shimel: And that to me is the real one plus one equals three of it.

Weeks: Yeah, I think – and that’s something that we see – you know, as we’ve seen the past two years that we’ve done this and I think we’ll see again in spades, is that we have the Slack channel set up during the conference for conversations, and last year during the 24 hours of the conference we saw 30,000 conversations on Slack, and that ability to exchange information, whether it’s with people on your own team and you have your internal Slack channel set up through your own company because, you know, you’re State Farm and that’s what you did and how you shared information, or you’re participating in the global channel, you know, I think it’s all about that kind of exchange of information and also the anonymous – somewhat anonymous level of that communication.

We all know it’s a lot easier to ask a question in a conference if no one can see you’re the person raising your hand or asking the question; you’re just one of many on a Slack channel saying, “Hey, I have this question,” and there’s – you know, it opens people up to sharing a little bit more or asking questions they might not otherwise get to ask.

Shimel: Absolutely, absolutely. Guys, I want to turn the conversation a bit if I can from numbers and viewing to content. Let’s talk – you know, people out listening to this, some of them may already be registered, some may not, some may not even know of All Day DevOps, right?

Weeks: Yeah.

Shimel: Mark, if they register – and registration’s free. You don’t have to be part of Club 20, you don’t have to have your whole company. If you’re just one person who’s digging DevOps you can register for free for All Day DevOps and sit in on 24 hours – up to 24 hours of DevOps, right? They don’t have to listen to all of it; you pick and choose what you want. But give us some of the highlights. What are some of the big hot topic speakers that you’re looking forward to?

Weeks: Mark, why don’t you go –

Miller: One of the things that you just – sure. One of the things that you just said is interesting to me, Alan. You said 24 hours of DevOps. Actually, when you do the math it’s more like 50 to 70 hours of DevOps because we have simultaneous channels happening. The things that I’m excited about seeing is, one, we have David who runs a CRE team and an SRE team at Google coming to talk about site reliability engineering. That’s a new topic for us this year, and to have Dave step in from Google, who is actually running that whole initiative for Google, it’s gonna be an exciting one for me. The other one that I’m – how do I say it?

I’m exciting that Cindy’s coming, Cindy Healy. She is the one that wrote some of the code that went on the Mars Pathfinder to send to Mars. Now that’s – the personal story behind how Cindy did that and how she became involved in it, what’s she’s doing now to encourage women in technology, that is a story that I really want people to be able to hear, so we’ve got her set up as a keynote. Derek, you’ve got some interesting things that you’re looking forward to, right?

Weeks: Yeah. You know, one is a conversation I just had last week with one of our keynote speakers, George Swan. He’s at Autodesk. Super interesting story of DevOps in the enterprise. So these guys knew, you know, the needed to transform the entire company – and I think they have about 200 products, 4,000 developers in their organization, and they needed to transition from an Agile organization to an organization that had DevOps practices top to bottom. At the same time that they were doing this they needed to transition into the cloud. They also needed to transition from a traditional license business to a subscription license business.

They had, like, four or five transformations going on at the same time – you know, become cloud-based infrastructure, transition to SaaS, transition to DevOps and some other things, and it was like, oh my gosh, one, this is a multiyear journey he’s gonna tell his story on, so it will be fascinating to kind of get lessons learned and also understand it’s not just hey, you know, transition to DevOps; it’s there are a lot of other things that are moving parts of our business that have to change, you know, along with this as the marketplace evolves for them and other participants. The other one that I’m really excited about, and a guy that I’ve got to see a couple of times at live conferences, is Navin Vembar. He’s the CTO over at GSA, the Government Services Organization.

They do all the main procurement for the U.S. government. But he is going to talk about how they transformed their organization into a DevOps practice and kind of looking at the maturity models that they use and kind of used as milestones for measuring their progress within their organization and also, you know, coming from an organization that loves silos, they love regulation, [laughs] they overly love governance sometimes, but to hear his journey, he’s a fascinating speaker and someone that I quote often, so always looking forward to hearing people like that join in.

Shimel: Sure.

Miller: Alan, the other thing is as Derek was talking I went over to the All Day DevOps.com site and clicked the speaker link. We’ve got 124 speakers this year. We had so many good submissions that we actually went above our quote. We had set it at 100 and we’re at 124 right now. It’s hard to go and cherry pick out of those. What we want to make sure people understand is two things; No. 1 is we want to bring 124 practitioners to everybody’s desktop. We want you to be able to pick and choose what you’d like to hear.

No. 2, Derek and I guarantee to the community is there are no vendor pitches here. Alan, you’ve been with us long enough you know. We really hold to that creed, that what we want is practitioners, and when you come here I think that you can trust us to provide that to you.

Shimel: Absolutely. That’s another aspect I want to just highlight too, guys. You know, we – you both highlighted what – some of the ones you’re – some of the talks you’re looking forward to most. Well, Mark, there’s 124 as you mentioned. All Day DevOps is a global phenomenon, and though we may have GSA and we may have some U.S.-based practitioners, Mark, I’ve been around the world with you, right? You and I have traveled – [laughs] literally traveled the world, and DevOps is a worldwide thing, and I think the speaker lineup reflects that. Have you had any stats, like how many different countries are represented?

Miller: Yeah, Derek’s got that, but before he jumps in with the stats I got a story that you’ll recognize. You and I went to Singapore, Bangkok, Sydney and Melbourne about two months ago.

Shimel: Yep.

Miller: While we were having dinner with Rob England in Sydney, I went, “Man, you’ve got a great story, Rob. Why don’t you speak at All Day DevOps?” Meaning because of our travel, because of our ability to meet people in the community, it gives all of us the ability to say this guy’s got a story that deserves to be told, and I think that that’s one of the things when Derek and I were first putting this together we actually talked to – amongst ourselves and said what we want to do is give exposure to people that are doing DevOps that deserve more recognition for what they’re doing, and our global platform has allowed us to do that. Derek, how many countries are we dealing with now?

Weeks: I think, you know, we’re around 130 different countries participating.

[Laughter]

It’s amazing, you know, to see that list grow because some of these – you just imagine like who’s practicing DevOps, and in my head like maybe 22 countries and maybe if I stretched it like maybe 40, right? But to see participants from all over the place – you know, and I just did a quick look at the registrations in the top cities. So No. 1, Bangalore, second, London, Toronto is high on the list, Melbourne, Australia; Sydney, Australia, Atlanta, New York, Istanbul, Chicago, Singapore, Amsterdam, San Jose, Seattle, Santiago, Jakarta.

Shimel: That’s amazing.

Weeks: You know, in the top 20, right? So it’s really, you know, a global kind of phenomena that we’re seeing. You know, where is the DevOps kind of center of expertise? Where are these people around the world? It’s pretty interesting to see where they all come from.

Shimel: Agreed. You know, Mark, listening to you talk –

Miller: I don’t want to leave anybody out but when we –

Shimel: Go ahead. You go, Mark.

Miller: Go ahead, Alan, go ahead.

Shimel: No, no, you go.

Miller: Yeah, I just – I don’t want to leave anybody out, but there’s some names I’d like to give out a call to, is like Midu in India, who’s helped us so much with the community in India. Look at Bangalore; it’s No. 1 on the list. When you look at Michael Mann, you look at Mark Cluett in London; those are community people that have said this is something worthwhile and I want my community to know about it, and that’s kind of – I don’t know if heartwarming is the word, but it means that we have actually resonated with various communities, cross-cultural around the world, and that means a lot to me.

Weeks: Yeah, I just – you know, curious, I just looked at the list of what cities have 40 people registered – Alpharetta, Georgia – that’s near Atlanta – Johannesburg, South Africa, Istanbul, Dubai, Barcelona, Seoul, Sao Paolo, and McLean, Virginia, where I’m sitting.

Shimel: Seoul, I haven’t heard Seoul yet.

Weeks: Yeah. So fascinating, just that list of only cities with 40 is extremely diverse.

Miller: Wow.

Shimel: You know, that’s really – that’s the power of the internet and it also speaks, Mark, to the power of DevOps, is if it was all centered in San Francisco or London, great. All the cool kids, right, are doing it. But it’s not; it is – it’s diversified, decentralized. You couldn’t snuff it out if you tried. You know, Mark, listening to you talk though a little bit about we met this one here and this one there, I can’t help but think of you as sort of the Anthony Bourdain of DevOps, venturing into parts unknown.

Miller: You know, I’m a story guy. I gotta jump in there. When I was in Manila, we got Anthony Bourdain’s driver to take us around to all those places. It was fascinating.

Shimel: And I’ve been on those trips with you. You like to off the beaten path. But, you know, this is a PG-rated show and, you know…

[Laughter]

Weeks: I’m gonna give Mark a new title of the Anthony Bourdain of DevOps.

[Laughter]

Miller: I’ll take it, I’ll take it.

Shimel: Anyway, hey guys, we’re about out of time here, but I wanted to check in ’cause we are getting close. We would be remiss if we didn’t at least mention where can people go to register for All Day DevOps? Derek?

Weeks: AllDayDevOps.com. It’s that easy. It takes 15 seconds to register. You’ll get a link to the schedule once you register so you can start to build your own schedule for yourself and your organization. And like we always say, once you register yourself encourage your team to register so that everyone can watch together.

Miller: Alan, the last thing that I’d like them to look at on the site too, is once they register go to the viewing party page. With over 110 viewing parties there has to be something local, that’s relatively local, if you would like to participate with other people.

Shimel: Fantastic.

Weeks: You know, the other thing just really quick before we go is one way that we do this conference for free for everyone is we have a lot of sponsors, like DevOps.com, Scaled Agile, Cisco, Puppet, Chef, GitLab, Sonatype, CloudBees and other organizations that help fund the conference to actually put this on and make this happen. We also have 245 community groups around the world that are helping us spread the word to say here’s free education for our members, and that’s really at the heart of this conference is the financial support to make it free for everyone and the community’s support to really spread the word to everyone that this is available to them.

Shimel: Excellent. Absolutely, Derek. These – as someone who’s done enough conferences, it really – it doesn’t happen without the sponsors, and a lot of people say, “Oh, the sponsors just want to spam me or contact me.” Yeah, you can talk about that all you want but they make the world go round on these things, right?

Weeks: Yeah.

Shimel: We can’t do it without them and don’t lose sight of that.

Weeks: Yeah. It doesn’t cost $10 million to run but it’s not free to run. [Laughs]

Shimel: Exactly. But we all know that. Anyway, guys, two of my good friends in the DevOps – well, not only in the DevOps space, in the world in general. Mark Miller, who I have traveled around the world with and eaten in some very –

Miller: Thank you, Alan, so much.

Shimel: – fun places – Anthony Bourdain there – and Derek Weeks.

Weeks: Thanks, Alan. Always a pleasure.

Shimel: Always a pleasure, man. I haven’t seen you in too long.

Weeks: Well –

Shimel: But hopefully we’ll see each other soon.

Weeks: Yeah.

Shimel: All Day DevOps coming to a computer near you Oct. 17, right?

Weeks: Yep.

Shimel: All day.

Miller: Starting at 3 a.m. New York Time, Alan.

Shimel: Excuse me?

Miller: Starting at 3 a.m. in New York. I’m sure you’ll be with us for the opening.

Shimel: Yes, I’ll be up bright and early at 3:00. But if you want to register, go to AllDayDevOps.com, guys. It’s free. Jump on it. It’s a great event. Have a great day, guys. Thanks for joining us. This is Alan Shimel for DevOps.com and you just listened to another DevOps Chat.

— Alan Shimel

October 11, 2018
DevOps Chat: The New Security Breed with Veracode’s Mark Curphey

DevSecOps has changed the way developers approach security in their application development cycle. But it’s also been the source of confusion, as some developers grapple with understanding how DevSecOps is different from application security. Mark Curphey, VP of strategy at CA Veracode, is clued in to the differences, which he discusses in this DevOps Chat.

As usual, the streaming audio is immediately below, followed by the transcript of our conversation.

Alan Shimel: Hey, everyone. It’s Alan Shimel, DevOps.com, Security Boulevard, and you’re here for another DevOps Chat. Today’s DevOps Chat is all about DevSecOps, AppSec, what’s happening on the front lines. I’m joined by an old friend of mine, Mark Curphey. Mark is currently VP of strategy at CA Veracode. Hey, Mark, welcome to DevOps Chat.

Mark Curphey: Thanks, Alan. Great to talk to you again.

Shimel: All right. So Mark, let’s start off with this. I know you’ve fairly recently joined Veracode. Give our audience a little bit of your background and how you came to be where you are.

Curphey: Yeah, sure. So misspent youth, went back to university late, did a master’s degree in information security, and wound up working for a bunch of banks in the city of London. Moved here to the states in 2000, then ran software security for Charles Schwab. So Microsoft were creating the SDLs. You know, sort of Gates had sent out the famous memo and I was doing the same for an online service basically at Charles Schwab. So that’s where I started. Then at OWASP, which some people sort of associate my name with, which is the Open Web Application Security Project.

And since then I’ve worked at Microsoft around the security tools team and then I think with MSDN, the Microsoft Developer Network. I more recently created a startup called SourceClear which was focused on helping developers use open source code safely in the modern DevOps world. We were acquired by Veracode about five months ago. So I’m now the VP of strategy at Veracode helping the Veracode platform and how we really sort of work with DevOps and the new way of doing things.

Shimel: Fair. Okay, so Mark, let’s start off with this though, and I think there’s some confusion out there with both security people as well as non-security people in terms of what’s the difference between AppSec and DevSecOps? Is one really just synonymous with the other? Is DevSecOps another name for AppSec? I don’t think it is. What do you think and how do you define the differences between them?

Curphey: Well, certainly every vendor’s got a DevSecOps product these days, right? So it’s easy why people are getting confused. I mean I think the reality is the way you have to do AppSec in a DevOps world is fundamentally different to the way we’ve done it before. It used to be about educating developers, writing policies that people had to read, human processes to do final check off, things like threat modeling, you know, all of these sort of things. They kind of worked okay in a waterfall world were kind of modified a bit to work in an agile world. But, you know, DevOps is changing the game completely. So we’re in a world of automation, and, you know, the modern ways that we have to secure it are fundamentally different. So for me DevSecOps is about how do you apply security in this modern, you know, DevOps world and that’s predominantly focused around, you know, automation. What can you automate and, you know, how can we put automation in those pipelines that are happening so that security happens inline as code is created and it’s moved through the pipelines?

Shimel: Fair enough. We talked pipelines. We talk left to right, Mark. You know, and Veracode is probably one of the leaders in this space when we talk about DevSecOps and shifting left and working. But I think what people want to know is really how does the security person or the security team work with the development team? It’s easy to say, but what does it really –

Curphey: Sure.

Shimel: What does it really mean?

Curphey: Yeah. I mean, look, I think there’s a new breed of security people which is exciting to see. Like the old world that used to be the development team and then there were the security team. There were kind of the two separate teams. The security team needed to sort of bless things before they went into production, but we get appointed a data center and whatever. These days what you see is it’s all about velocity.

So, you know, there are security people that are embedded into the security teams and they’re kind of acting like consultants and helping the dev team do security as and when it’s needed and make the right decisions without slowing things down. So instead of it sort of being this procedural thing where they were required to go through whatever a control grate, they’re just tired of the flow. That’s exciting to see because I think we’re seeing a paradigm shift of how that happens.

Shimel: Yep, I think we are seeing a paradigm shift in this. So here’s going to be a question you’re going to say, “Alan, you’re crazy,” but Mark, does it make a difference? Is it definitively improving our security here?

Curphey: Yeah. First, Alan, I’m never gonna call you crazy, but that’s good to know, I think.

Shimel: I figured you would.

Curphey: No, but look, I mean like, for sure, like think about like we all know what happened with Equifax, right? Like biggest data breach in history, result of open source that was insecure and hadn’t been updated. That problem is solvable and it’s solvable at scale in a pipeline. So what we were doing at SourceClear – I don’t want to turn into a product pitch in any sense, but we were basically trying to close the loop of this library is out of date, issue the pull request, figure out if it’s going to break things, and if so, update it. And the developers loved that, not because they’re fixing security but they’re fixing the dependency hell problem.

So we’ve not been able to do that before because, you know, we hadn’t been injected directly in the pipelines. So these are opportunities that really make a difference and companies that implement these tools like us and there are others around, totally can avoid the whole Equifax thing. It’s not a case of like no one got notified or no one knew. Like it happens automatically in the pipeline. So there are great opportunities to do things like that.

And I think moving forward we can also look at things like are people using dangerous APIs? Are they calling, you know, external services that we don’t want them to call? Like to a large extent the pipeline has become the new firewall and it’s a place where we can put controls, inspect the traffic, and decide what we want to allow and what we don’t want to allow which is a great place to be.

Shimel: I agree. I agree there. So Mark, I guess where I wanted to go next with this is a lot – again, I’m a man who lives with a foot in each world, right? I spend a lot of time with my security friends and colleagues that I’ve known for years and years and years, but as part of DevOps.com I’m out speaking to developers an awful lot, right?

Curphey: Mm-hmm.

Shimel: And some of the questions that I hear from both sides is, okay, you can’t serve two masters, there can’t be two people in charge. How does the day-to-day of this flow? You know what I’m saying?

Curphey: Yeah, no, for sure. I mean look, the reality is in all organizations the digital transformation and everything else happens that it’s all about value creation and the value is created by developers. So they’ve been empowered to choose their tools. They’ve been empowered to figure out which process allows them to innovate faster and all those things. With that we’ve seen the rise of the cloud and everything else. So it can’t be an us or them scenario. It’s how do you support those developers on their mission to change things and create this digital transformation? So the old ways, you still see it but you still see the old school of security people saying no and stopping people; but those battles are not going to be won. It’s about how do we help people move forward at the right rate.

I mean I kind of equate it like someone was saying the other day, like similar to autonomous cars, like you’re not going to stop them. Like figure out how to make them work properly, safely, and securely. But if you don’t like it, you’re not going to stop that, have that technology happening and being created so you’ve got to embrace it. That I think is the philosophy that is going to win out the day.

Shimel: Fair enough. I don’t disagree with you there, Mark. Let’s talk a little bit about what you see near term and maybe a little bit longer term in developments here that, you know, our listeners, you know, could fundamentally change their day to day. Where do you think we’re heading?

Curphey: Yeah, sure. So, you know, I think machine learning and artificial intelligence and big data were sort of touted and, you know, the hype cycle kick off and, yeah, people didn’t always deliver on that. But there are exciting things happening in that which allow us at scale and at speed to do things that we couldn’t do before. So a good example of that is in the security world most of the vulnerabilities no longer exist in the CV system open source code. They just can’t keep up with the scale. We’re releasing thousands of libraries. In the DevOps world, developers find things, fix them, push them out. They don’t go back to monitor and publish these vulnerabilities, etc.

But the great news is, you know, there are big data systems, machine learning that can process that data and we can identify those things at scale. Those same kind of techniques have been applied by Google and the Android App Stores and things like that. So that application of like that modern tech I think has great opportunities for us to do things which we’ve not been able to do before, and you’ve certainly seen some of the big vulnerabilities that have been released have been a result of that stuff coming out.

Shimel: Got it. Got it. I just had my phone ringing there. I apologize. Mark, let’s, if I can and if you’re not too shy about it, I doubt you will be, let’s talk specifically a little bit about Veracode.

Curphey: Yes.

Shimel: You know, you’ve been there five months. What do you see? What gets you excited there in the morning?

Curphey: Yeah. We had loads of places to sort of land. We came to the conclusion that people wanted to have less tools than more. So they wanted to buy a suite. When you look around, what the Veracode guys had done is built sort of best-in-class SAST and it started working on software composition analysis. We had best-in-class software composition analysis. So it made sense from that perspective.

Also as you know, the heritage of the company, you know, it isn’t a fly-by-night company. It’s Chris Wysopal and Christien Rioux, right? These guys were in the loft, right? So that legendary around the place. So the company has this real DNA about it around security. So for me it’s kind of this exciting security DNA in the company embracing the way we build modern software. So that’s what attracted us to join forces. We’ve been extremely excited since. A lot of exciting things happening that for sure will start to come out of it at the other side no doubt.

Shimel: I agree with you. I actually have Chris on a panel we’re doing on DevSecOps next week. I’m really excited to have Chris as well as Dave Duncan from CA, I think is on the panel with us.

Curphey: Right. Right.

Shimel: So Mark, you know, running out of time here, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about, you know, you came into Veracode, as you said, about five months ago via the acquisition. There’s a lot of people out there seeing a lot of buying and selling, M&A kind of stuff going on in especially around DevSecOps and DevOps related companies. I mean obviously a rising tide lifts all boats and there’s consolidation going on, but is there anything else at play that you’re seeing that’s kind of driving this stuff?

Curphey: Well, I mean, you know, in the place that you look on the horizon is actually where the dev tools are going. So you know, if we look at companies like AWS, it’s not really just a hosting platform. It’s a full tool suite, right, of everything from machine learning libraries in the cloud to real-time databases and things. Google and Azure are building the same. As we start to think about like what is a next generation of developer look like, they’re likely to use an IDE and a browser. It’s not going to run on a desktop anymore. And you know, co-changes happen and everything happens up in the cloud. So I think there are a lot of exciting things happening there and how do you integrate security into that world for sure. So that’s a lot of the stuff that I’m focused on. Then you can get scaled I think.

Shimel: Got it. Got it. Mark, you know, I appreciate you talking to us today. I think we’re about out of time. But for people who want to get more information on what’s going on, veracode.com obviously, correct?

Curphey: Yeah, veracode.com is an excellent, well-trafficked blog with Wysopal and various other people and myself contributing to it which is great and we’re out speaking at conferences and talking about some of the both current work and sort of some of the futuristic stuff as well. So love to engage with the community and the industry for sure.

Shimel: Perfect. All right. Hey, Mark Curphey, VP of Strategy, CA Veracode. Thanks for being our guest in this episode of DevOps Chat and we look forward to having you on again soon.

Curphey: Yeah, great, Alan, thanks a lot. Great to reconnect and look forward to doing so the next time.

Shimel: Okay.

Curphey: Take care.

Shimel: This is Alan Shimel for DevOps.com. You’ve just listened to another DevOps Chat.

— Alan Shimel

October 9, 2018
DevOps World | Jenkins World 2018 San Francisco: Video Interviews, Day 1

DevOps World | Jenkins World 2018 San Francisco has come and gone, but not without leaving a multitude of new connections and fascinating conversations in its wake. Case in point: the myriad video interviews now available on DevOps TV.

During my two days at the conference, the broadcast booth in the exhibit hall was humming with folks from all over stopping in for a quick chat with Jayne Groll, CEO of DevOps Institute, or me. Topics ranged from the growing influence of artificial intelligence to the importance of testing and DevSecOps. Below is a recap of the Day 1 video interviews (Day 2’s recap will post next week):

Twistlock Talks Container Security

Keith Mokris of Twistlock kicked off the day’s conversations with a discussion about security in the DevOps and container space, including the challenges organizations have in creating and deploying cloud-native apps.

Plutora Discusses Integration Challenges Among Companies

Bob Davis of Plutora stopped by to talk about the struggles his company sees organizations having in integrating their legacy systems with newer technologies such as cloud, as well as scaling their DevOps initiatives enterprisewide.

QA Symphony Recaps Tricentis Merger

DJ Frank, sales engineer at QA Symphony, discusses his company’s recent merger with Tricentis and the role of automation in digital transformation, no matter how far along organizations are in their journey.

AppliTools Talks Digital Transformation

James Lamberti of AppliTools chatted with DevOps Institute’s Jayne Groll about the role his company plays in digital transformation, specifically how it solves the problem of broken UIs and their impact on the customer experience.

KPMG Highlights Need for Right Toolchain in Transformation

Mark Shank and Mike Wolf of KPMG discussed with Groll business transformation beyond tooling in determining the right approach to modern delivery and DevOps.

American Express’ DevOps Journey

Durga Dabberu of American Express and Groll discuss his company’s journey to DevOps and how Amex has transformed as a result.

XebiaLabs Talks DevOps Beyond ‘Dev’

Patrick Bishop of XebiaLabs chatted with Groll about trends in the DevOps space and cultural challenge many organizations face in adopting DevOps methodologies.

WhiteSource Talks Security’s Role in Transformation

Dan Gross of WhiteSource and Groll discussed his company’s role in helping organizations transform using open source technologies within the boundaries of security.

Tricentis and the Evolution of Testing

Wayne Ariola of Tricentis and Groll chatted about the transformation of testing as a competency across the DevOps spectrum.

Red Hat Talks Cloud-Native, Kubernetes

Red Hat’s Ari Livigni discussed with Groll the shift toward cloud-native Jenkins and using Kubernetes as their platform of choice and how Red Hat is adapting to this new paradigm.

Infostretch and the Continuous Economy

Infostretch CEO and co-founder Rutesh Shah discusses the “continuous economy” and his company’s role as a provider of continuous testing.

DevOps from the Service Provider Perspective

Harris Kirk of Walters Kluwer, a service provider focusing on the legal, tax, finance and healthcare industries, outlined how his company is using DevOps to help its clients work more effectively.

So many conversations, so little time! Check back next week for a recap of the Day 2 video interviews.

— Charlene O’Hanlon

October 5, 2018
DevOps Dozen 2018: Nominations Deadline Approaching
The last day to submit your nominations for the DevOps Dozen 2018 awards is Oct 10. Click here to vote.

This year’s awards will include 12 categories, with a winner chosen from each. The top four to six nominees in each category will become finalists, who will be selected based upon the number of nominations they received. You can nominate up to two entrants in each category; however, you can make only one nomination per person. In addition, everyone nominating will be required to provide their name and email address; while that won’t thwart any ballot-stuffing, we hope people will be trustworthy during the nomination process. The winners will be selected by our panel of judges.

Who are the judges? This was tough. We couldn’t have anyone who might be eligible for an award. That disqualifies vendors, practitioners and many others. However, I think we have four great judges:
1. Alan Shimel, founder and editor in chief, DevOps.com
2. George Hulme, longtime tech journalist and editor at DevOps.com and Security Boulevard
3. Jayne Groll, CEO and co-founder of the DevOps Institute
4. Helen Beal, DevOpsologist at Ranger4.
So what are the dozen categories for the DevOps Dozen this year? That you can get on the site itself, but here they are as well:

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Thank you again for your enthusiastic response to last year’s awards. The full list of 2017 finalists and winners are available to view here.

There are so many great companies and people involved in DevOps that it’s always difficult to pick the winners. We know some worthy choices will not be voted tops in their category; however, acknowledging them in our awards process helps show how important they are in the DevOps space.

As stated earlier, the top four to six nominees in each category will be designated as finalists, who then can submit a presentation on why they deserve the award to judges@devops.com. Finalists will be announced the second week of November and the winners, who will be chosen by our panel of judges, will be announced in December.

If you have questions, send them to DD@devops.com. Voting for finalist nominees is open for three weeks, so don’t waste any time—nominate your favorites today. Good luck to everyone vying to be one of the DevOps Dozen 2018!

— Alan Shimel
October 5, 2018
Mainframes and DevOps: The Odd Couple of Digital Transformation

I am still surprised when I go to industry conferences and I hear people talking about the imminent demise of the mainframe. More common and equally wrong is how mainframes don’t work in today’s agile/DevOps/cloud/container world. The fact is, with trillions of dollars invested in our mainframes and more every day, the mainframe is not going extinct anytime soon. Equally factual is mainframes and DevOps can work well together.

They may seem incompatible at first blush, but mainframes and DevOps work. We have written more than several articles on mainframes and DevOps. Our own Don MacVittie has written two excellent ebooks on mainframes and DevOps: “DevOps-ing the Mainframe” and “Automation: Modernizing the Mainframe for DevOps.” There is also a series of DevOps Chats on this subject. This one, with Rosalind Radcliffe of IBM’s Enterprise Systems, is a good one.

Now, we would like to hear from you. What do you think regarding mainframes and DevOps? Working with our friends at CA Technologies’ mainframe business unit, we are conducting a mini-survey (just 10 questions) on mainframe use. It is embedded below this paragraph. You taking a few minutes to answer will help us better understand what is happening with mainframes and DevOps.

The Mini-Survey

Create your own user feedback survey

If the survey embed didn’t work for you, you can also answer the 10 questions right here.

If you’ve reached here because you took the survey, thanks very much. If you didn’t, please take a moment and do so. The survey doesn’t ask for any contact info and we promise you won’t receive any spam email or calls.

Still would rather not answer the survey? OK, at least have a look at the ebooks listed above or listen to the chats. But, if you really think mainframes are going away or you have an opinion on mainframes and DevOps in general, you can write me at editor@devops.com. I would be happy to hear about it. Perhaps you want to write an article about your views? That is fine, too—write me.

In the meantime, next time you are at a tech conference and the issue of mainframes and DevOps comes up, don’t spread fake news. The mainframe is alive and well. More of our financial, health and other transactions as well as systems of record go through them than ever before.

— Alan Shimel

October 4, 2018
DevOps Chat: JFrog Announces $165 Million Funding Round

In what may be the biggest round of investment yet in the DevOps space, JFrog announced today that it has closed its Series D round of funding totaling $165 million. The round was led by a new investor, Insight Venture Partners. Jeff Horing, co-founder and managing director of Insight, will join JFrog’s board.

JFrog, the developers of Artifactory and other artifact-related software, has recently taken a higher mission to develop a platform named JFrog EnterprisePlus, a first-of-its-kind, universal DevOps platform. According to JFrog, the money raised “will drive JFrog product innovation, support rapid expansion into new markets and accelerate both organic and inorganic growth.”

The company had raised something in the area of $65 million in previous rounds. It has also made several acquisitions to add both new functionality and geographical reach.

As readers of DevOps.com are aware, we have closely followed JFrog’s progress over the years, as the company represents a good example of how vendors are growing and establishing themselves in the DevOps market.

We had a chance to sit down and speak with JFrog co-founder and CEO, Shlomi Ben Haim, about this latest news. Our conversation can be listened to below, followed by a transcript of our chat. Enjoy and congrats to the JFrog team.

Audio

Transcript

Alan Shimel: Hey, everyone. It’s Alan Shimel, DevOps.com. You’re listening to a DevOps Chat, and we’re here breaking some big news this morning. The folks over at JFrog, makers of Artifactory and several other great projects and products, have announced what may be one of the largest rounds ever in the DevOps space, $165 million, I believe, but joining us is Shlomi Ben Haim, co-founder, CEO of JFrog, and he can tell us all about it. Shlomi, welcome.

Shlomi Ben Haim: Hey, Alan. Great to meet you again. Thank you for having me.

Shimel: Thank you, my pleasure. So Shlomi, as I mentioned earlier, exciting, big news coming from JFrog today. Did I get the number right, $165 million round?

Ben Haim: Yes. [Laughs] You got it right. It’s $165 million, series D.

Shimel: So first of all, Shlomi, congratulations. You know, raising any amount of money is never easy; raising this kind of money is truly an unbelievable task I can’t even imagine. So congratulations to you and Fred and Yoav and the whole team at JFrog on this accomplishment.

Ben Haim: Thank you very much, Alan. We are not taking it for granted and we are very, very excited. Thank you.

Shimel: Good. So Shlomi, I understand Insight Venture partners led the round, is that correct?

Ben Haim: That’s correct. Insight Venture led our series D. Jeff Horing will be the partner that will join our board.

Shimel: Excellent. And talk to us a little bit – they led but your existing investors participated. Any other new investors?

Ben Haim: Yes. So this round actually was one of the best experiences [laughs] we ever had in the landscape of fundraising. We had awesome partners reaching out to us throughout the, I don’t know, last three years, and we started to build a relationship with all of them. And one of the things that we wanted to make sure in this round is that we would have funds that understand late stage and understand mature companies with mature products in the market, and this is how we met Insight and some other great VCs. Together with Insight in this round, Spark Capital joined us with Alex Clayton and Geodesic, that you probably know, that have some presence in Japan. Other than that, Battery really supported this round. Battery is one of our current investors alongside Sapphire and Scale and Vintage and Bell Capital. Actually, most of our investors joined this round again.

Shimel: Excellent. Excellent, excellent, excellent. So Shlomi, you know, beyond the big number, talk to us a little bit about what does it mean for JFrog?

Ben Haim: Well that’s a good question because we were in this place when the company’s doing great and you are very – you are going very fast and very efficiently and the market is going, so it’s not just your business, it’s the whole market, the whole DevOps market is booming, and the fruits of our labors were something that we felt every day with all of our six products. And just three months ago we released a platform, the Enterprise Plus JFrog platform, which is an end-to-end solution to all kinds of binary, and we knew that this is the right timing to go big on the market and take it down because JFrog – as people are telling us, JFrog is everywhere. It’s about to be the standout of the DevOps industry. And now that we are planning some big things to the market we needed to support that with the right amount of funds and to build a great company.

Shimel: Sure. And, you know, Shlomi, we just spoke last week; you guys had acquired a company that was gonna help with delivering DevOps professional services, Trainologic. You’ve expanded all over the world, obviously, or are expanding, but really this brings a whole different scale to the equation, you know? We’re not talking about just opening outposts; with this kind of, you know, capital you can afford to make some major bets, right? Where do you see sort of major bets being made, major moves being made? Not just geographically, Shlomi, but in terms of focus areas?

Ben Haim: Yeah. So Ana and I will humbly say that we have raised the highest amount in the DevOps history, not just to create the news item but to create history. So JFrog’s vision is to make sure that software updates become liquid. Software updates should run like water in pipes. And with the product alignment that we got to, with the Enterprise Plus release, now that we have an end-to-end solution with the universal DevOps that keeps the freedom of choice in the hands of the developers, we are certain that this, alongside the presence we have in the market – we have over 4,500 customers – we are positive that JFrog will be the company or at least have the potential to be the company behind all the software updates in the world.

And this is the real pain of DevOps, this is what DevOps is trying to solve; we are trying to get software from A to B, and JFrog is following all the edges and support this binary flow and software distribution within our customer’s data centers and different sides. So I think that with this vision, to be the company behind all the software updates in the world, you have to dream big, you have to build big, you have to expand. You have to expand not just geographically as you mentioned, you have to expand with technology so you will be able to support whatever needs that will be raised, and you also have to take it seriously. It comes with a lot of responsibility.

Shimel: It sure does, it sure does. Shlomi, you know, they say a rising tide lifts all boats, and certainly, you know, look, we saw in the last – just this past month, GitLab raised $100 million round and $1 billion-plus valuation. We saw GitHub not that long ago purchased for $7 billion from Microsoft. And now we see JFrog with $165 million raised. What does this mean for the DevOps market in general, right? What does this mean for the DevOps market I mean for other companies and stuff like that?

Ben Haim: Well, you and I still remember the days that DevOps was not even a term, right? And of course there was no budget line called DevOps. So I think that the industry realized and acknowledged the fact that the biggest challenge is not the challenge of software; it’s the challenge of fast. We have to do things fast and we have to combine the human power with the machine power, and this is what DevOps is all about. You are right; this year was an amazing year for companies in this domain. So GitLab I think raised this $100 million last month, but these started with Xebia and then Mesosphere and then Sonatype and GitLab and of course the giant acquisition of GitHub, which I’m not sure if it’s DevOps or dev, but in any ways, same neighborhood. And this is exactly what I’m talking about.

The world belongs to those who are pushing software from build to production and we are all as consumers expect software to be up-to-date at any place, anytime in a secure way, and this is what we are doing. This is JFrog’s mission, and I think that VCs acknowledge that. I think that the market acknowledge that. I think that if you’re looking at Atlassian, which is for me the best example of building something big in the world of software infrastructure, if you look at their market cap we all see the same sign and the sign says this is going to be a big market.

Shimel: Yeah. It’s a huge market. So Shlomi, you know, with this kind of raise, we also have the opportunity to maybe move out of the comfort zone. So this is an entrepreneurial dilemma; do you double down on what you’re doing, doing well and do it better, or do you look to maybe in adjacent areas or that blend in nicely with what you’re doing now but expand the offering? You know, you drive the vision. You know, it’s tempting but also discipline requires focus on what you do well. What do you think about that?

Ben Haim: I think that it’s maybe the most popular entrepreneurial dilemma, but one very smart investor told me once, “I’m not here to invest in what he did; I am here to invest in what you’re going to do together with me.” And I’m still taking this very important sentence very seriously. We built a great business and a very solid business with awesome foundation and I think, Alan, you know that, the market knows that and, you know, giant companies are investing in JFrog every day. We are growing at a pace of 100 new logos as month, so we are very honored and very pleased to see that what we have created is growing, but it’s not even the tip of the iceberg. The whole idea of pushing software from the development machine to whatever edge is a big mission because it comes with high availability and it comes with a universal solution and it comes with security and it comes with automation and scheduling.

And you start to see the consolidation in the DevOps market; people start to understand that you need a code repository – this is a very important piece – and you need an artifact repository – and this is a very important piece – and on top of those two you start to build the layers of DevOps. So we are taking this field by field and layer by layer, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. We will follow any edge and I think that it’s just the beginning. We didn’t even start to think about DevOps for IoT, which will also be a big thing five years from now.

Shimel: I think maybe even before five years.

Ben Haim: I agree with you, yeah.

Shimel: So let me turn it another direction. You know, one of the things I personally admire about JFrog is the culture that you and the team have built there. It’s great, it’s exciting, it’s energized. I can only imagine the buzz internally as a company around the race. Why don’t you share with our audience a little bit of insight. How has the team there reacted to the news?

Ben Haim: So, Alan, I – you touch [laughs] the very special, you know, spot in my heart when you speak about our team. I always thought that it’s great to build a company of 50 people or 100 people because you can preserve the culture, but now we are over 400 people and some of the folks are, you know, a result of M&A and acquisitions that other companies – great companies that joined us, and still we can protect what we call the JFrog codex and our culture and I’m very, very pleased to see it. Obviously, we didn’t share it yet with all the folks – we are going to do it on the third, on Wednesday – but we shared it with all the management, different tiers of the management.

The excitement is through the roof mainly because of the fact that everyone that walks in JFrog – you know what, not everyone – but 90 percent of whoever walks into JFrog is so humble and, you know, so focused on the day-to-day mission, and when something like this is happening it’s just – you know, it’s more than shocking news. It’s going to the mirror and look at the reflection and say, hey, we did something great and we built it together. And we say in JFrog, once we leap forward you won’t go back, but it’s not about that. It’s about once you leap forward together with your team you won’t go back, and I think that this is the significance of JFrog.

Shimel: Excellent, excellent. Shlomi, also – look, you spend most of your time I know now in the states, but JFrog is originally an Israeli company. This has also gotta be big news in Israel I would imagine. I don’t know if an Israeli company – I mean Israeli companies have had big exits, but this kind of raise, and you’re talking to us today from Israel. Can you give us a sense on that, of what does it mean within the Israeli tech industry, which is, you know, such a hot, hot space, but this has got to, you know, make some noise there, right?

Ben Haim: Yeah, absolutely. Well this is – you know, these are big numbers for any market, like I don’t know any other company in the landscape of DevOps that’s raised this amount and with these great partners, so I think it’s big news everywhere, but yes, you’re very correct. And, you know, the Israeli market, it will be a big news item, though there are companies in Israel that raised about $100 million, some of them even above $200 million, but there is something very interesting happening in the industry, the high tech industry in Israel. We were used to known for our technology, you know, the Israeli technologies and all the startups booming in this very small country, and then for products – so you heard about companies like Waze and so on – and now I see more and more Israeli entrepreneurs that are daring to dream big and to say “I’m going to build my own company to be public and to last forever,” and to stay there and not just in the next five years and then get bought by one of the giants, but it’s going to stay relevant for the rest of the years. And I see more and more Israeli founders thinking that way, raising money from late-stage funds, raising money with an IPO in mind – you know what? Not as a goal but as a milestone. It’s something that will structure the company to be bigger and better. And I’m very excited to be part of this industry as well.

Shimel: Absolutely, and you should be. So Shlomi, right there, I gotta ask; is that – is an IPO versus an acquisition the goal, the end game here or you’ll take that as it comes?

Ben Haim: You know, we think about the next act. For us, IPO is a very important milestone. It’s another way to raise money; to spend not from the funds but from the public, but it’s something that we’re looking at. Jacob Shulman, our CFO, joined us from Mellanox, which is a public company. We know what we are doing but it’s a milestone. If you ask me what is my biggest challenge, I want JFrog to be able to cross the $1 billion threshold before 2025. This is a very, very long run goal but, well, we are already at 10 years old JFrog so you can bet on us, keep your eyes open, and we will make it happen.

Shimel: Excellent. All right. Shlomi, we’re about out of time, but let me again say congratulations, mazel tov; just a real accomplishment here. But you know what? One thing I’ve learned with raising money, Shlomi, is it’s not anyone does you a favor. People don’t give you money ’cause you’re a nice guy or they want – you know, they do it because they see a way to make more money. So to me this represents more than anything a tremendous vote of confidence in what you’re doing there and what the potential return on investment is, right? So for that alone, really hats off to you and the team. I wish JFrog, you know, and you and the team fantastic success going forward. We’re all gonna be watching. Make us proud. And thanks for talking to us today.

Ben Haim: Thank you so much, Alan. I really appreciate what you do for us and what you do for the DevOps industry. It’s not taken for granted. Thank you so much for all your time and for giving me the opportunity –

Shimel: Yeah, my pleasure.

Ben Haim: – to speak about this again. Thank you.

Shimel: We will for sure. Shlomi Ben Haim, co-founder, CEO, JFrog just announced $165 million round led by Insight Venture Partners. Fantastic news. This is Alan Shimel for DevOps.com. You’ve just listened to another DevOps Chat. Have a great day.

— Alan Shimel

October 4, 2018
GitLab Joins Unicorn Club With $100m Raise

GitLab has become the latest member of the Unicorn club after announcing a $100m round of funding led by ICONIQ Capital. This latest round, a series D brings the total capital raise for GitLab to $145m over 3 years. According to the company it also raised their market valuation to over the magical $1B mark.

Some of GitLab’s success in raising this latest round of capital can be attributed to a raising tide lifting all boats. Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub for $7.5B continues to make ripples in the software developer tools space. But while they share Git in their name, GitLab is not just another Git or GitHub imitator. No, GitLab has a far more ambitious mission. They actually want to be a one stop shop for a complete end to end DevOps solution. Using GitLab you can replace 6 to 9 different DevOps related tools. Or at least that is the vision.

I have always thought this was a tall order that would require a different way of building software to succeed. GitLab’s CEO Sid Sijbrandij thinks he has found this new method. Using open source, GitLab has an army of software contributors that donate their software to GitLab everyday. With monthly releases you can see the results of this philosophy with constant progress on all fronts at once.

While Sid realizes that every component or area of GitLab may not be best of breed today, it is his vision that it will be. So what does $100m buy you today to recognize this vision? Well you can hear it right from the ~~horse’s~~ unicorn’s mouth. I sat down with Sid to discuss the raise, the future of GitLab and the market in general.

I have had the pleasure of interviewing Sid before. He has some very good ideas on where the market is and where it is heading. Below is our conversation, enjoy!

[wpvideo lvF0Ey0B]

— Alan Shimel

September 21, 2018
Study Reveals Pain Points for Enterprise Workers

While it may be an afterthought at some companies, C-suite leaders would do well to keep an eye on workforce trends to optimize productivity and work quality.

A study commissioned by Workfront, a work-management software provider, offers insights into what many enterprise workers consider to be obstacles to getting their work done. You already know that unnecessary meetings and mountains of email are on the list, but you might gain some perspective from some of the study’s other conclusions.

Released recently, “State of Work 2018-19” was fielded by Regina Corso Consulting in June and gathered some 2,000 responses from U.S. employees who work for companies with at least 500 employees, use a computer on the job and collaborate with colleagues on projects.

Enterprise Workers Have a Love-Hate Relationship with Automation

Almost 70 percent of respondents believe that automation will give them more time to do their primary job responsibilities. And 86 percent of U.S. workers believe that the rise of automation will help them think of work in new and innovative ways. But half of the respondents also report that they know people who have already lost their jobs because of automation. Millennials are twice as likely as Baby Boomers to worry that automation will cause them to lose their jobs. Overall, what may be the most surprising data point is that the study’s findings clearly show workers to be generally optimistic about automation.

Recommendation: Your company needs an expert or a task force out front, reviewing business process in all parts of the company, helping to formulate automation strategy, and finding the best ways to test and rollout automation solutions. Be ahead of the curve enough to give some thought to retraining people whose jobs might be affected for new roles.

U.S. Workers Need Help to Foster Innovation Within Their Company

Many are frustrated by the lack of prioritization and/or structure for innovating. Almost 65 percent of the respondents reported that their companies regularly ask employees to think about new ways of doing things. And almost 60 percent said that they’re barely getting their day-to-day work done and don’t have time to think beyond today’s to-do list. Millennials are more concerned with the importance of innovation and more frustrated by their inability to free up time to focus on it than Baby Boomers. Gen X falls in the middle.

Recommendation: It’s not enough to just tell employees you want them to innovate. Innovation requires a different kind of thinking than tactical day-to-day decision-making. They may need brainstorm sessions. You might need to give them strategic problems to work on. You might need to suggest business processes that need streamlining. But more than anything else, you need to give them permission to take a specific amount of time per week or month to work on this longer-term problem.

Workers are Skeptical of the Quality of Their Colleagues’ Work

This has the potential to be divisive. U.S. workers are dubious about the quality of coworkers’ work and rate themselves as being more productive than those around them. Since the majority of respondents answered that way, you have to wonder what corrosive quality of the U.S. workplace is making people think that.

Recommendations: Workfront offers some suggestions worth passing along: 1. Ask your team members what they think of each other. Use what you learn to guide you in the following steps. 2. Provide visibility into the work that everyone is doing so that team members realize what each member is tasked with. 3. Celebrate success and accomplishment. And spread that recognition around the entire team, if possible. This requires significant effort on the part of management, but the result is pride and mutual respect.

C-Suite: The Key to Managing Multigenerational Teams

Workfront has produced the “State of Work” survey for five years. While it hasn’t previously gathered trend information across years, one of the clear trends is the difficulty of managing the several generations in the workplace, each with its own set of priorities, said Chris O’Neal, product evangelist at Workfront.

“For the first time in history, we’ve got four or five generations working alongside each other in the workforce. We’ve got baby boomers all the way up to gen z,” O’Neal said. “So, every company out there needs to come to terms with the concept of melding together a multigenerational workforce. And there are differences. In broad strokes, the way we look at it is that there are digital immigrants and digital natives. They’re all important; they all bring something to the table, whether it’s experience and leadership to adaptability and just-in-time skills.

“We believe that this multigenerational workforce needs to be led by an executive team that understands that they have different ways of looking at the world, different ways of working,” he added. “They need to be brought together by shared purpose and shared values within the organization.”

— Scot Finnie

September 19, 2018