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Category: News

  • Twilio Provides 90-Day Free Developer Access to Video Service

    Twilio Provides 90-Day Free Developer Access to Video Service

    Twilio this week announced it will make its video services available for free for three months to developers who are building applications to address COVID-19 pandemic uses cases in the health care, education and nonprofit sectors if they sign up to use the platform before June 30.

    Jesper Joergensen, general manager for voice and video at Twilio, said most of the applications being built to address the crisis benefit greatly from having video embedded in them. For example, a forms-based healthcare application could have embedded videos or include a button that would start a video chat with a healthcare professional. Alternatively, an SMS text could be used to request an appointment and also include a link to a videoconference that would enable healthcare professionals to diagnose a patient remotely. Those types of applications also could go a long way to make it simpler to navigate what are often complex healthcare procedures, noted Joergensen.

    In the education sector, Twilio is already seeing institutions building a wide range of applications that rely on video to engage students and maintain business operations, he added.

    While many applications are being built to address pressing issues, Joergensen said many applications that embed video are being built for the new normal. No one is quite sure when the COVID-19 pandemic will be over or whether it might flare up again. There also could be other pandemics in the future. Many organizations are now moving to make mobile applications that have video capabilities embedded within them a core element of their business continuity strategy, which is being updated in the wake of the pandemic, said Joergensen.

    In general, he said embedding video capabilities within an application provides more context within an application. Otherwise, the end user needs to move off the application to launch a separate videoconferencing platform.

    Twilio makes it easier for developers to embed video within an application using a software development kit for either Apple iOS or Google Android devices. The SDK allows developers to invoke Twilio application programming interfaces (APIs) to access the Twilio Video service running on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud. While organizations that build these applications don’t necessarily need to master best DevOps practices to build and roll them out, Joergensen said organizations that have embraced DevOps typically have the agile development skills needed to quickly build and test COVID-19 applications.

    In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, online video has gone mainstream. Once the pandemic subsides there will be a much higher level of comfort with online video for a wide range of processes ranging from telemedicine to tax preparation. Applications that don’t embed video capabilities will appear antiquated by comparison. Video now has a major role to play in simplifying the customer journey, noted Joergensen.

    It may take a while for organizations to adjust to the new normal once the current pandemic subsides, but it’s clear online video has finally been pushed across the proverbial chasm of adoption.

    — Mike Vizard

  • GitHub Makes Private Repositories Free for Unlimited Users

    GitHub Makes Private Repositories Free for Unlimited Users

    GitHub this week announced is making available private repositories for an unlimited number of collaborators available to all GitHub accounts for free.

    Kelly Stirman, vice president of product strategy and marketing, said that subsidiary of Microsoft could make this move because it is now generating enough revenue from the enterprise edition of its platform to sustain its business model.

    Previously, organizations that wanted to use GitHub for private development needed to subscribe to a paid plan. DevOps teams that need access to advanced features such as code owners or secure access markup language (SAML) support will still need to upgrade to a paid plan. However, the cost of a paid Team plan has been reduced to $4 per user/month from $9 per user/month, effective immediately, as part of an effort to increase the use of paid plans around the globe. Existing customers of paid plans will also see their bill reduced, added Stirman. Alternatively, existing customers can downgrade their current plan to take advantage of a free service.

    The overall goal is to increase the number of projects being developed on GitHub, said Stirman. Many open source projects generally get started by small groups of developers that are not initially ready to share their code publicly. GitHub provides an affordable way to launch those projects among a core set of developers that may not have ever met one another.

    Stirman also noted private repositories on GitHub provide a much more cost-effective alternative to standing up a private repository in an on-premises IT environment that requires IT teams to provision and manage their own infrastructure.

    GitHub also tracks all the vulnerabilities that are discovered in open source projects hosted on the platform, which is information that is shared with every developer on the platform, added Stirman.

    Additionally, GitHub provides access to a content delivery network (CDN) to more easily share code across geographically distributed teams of developers, Stirman said.

    It’s hard to forecast how much pent-up demand there is for access to a free private repository for an unlimited number of collaborators. GitHub has previously made private repositories available for a limited number of collaborators. Nevertheless, Stirman said there was a massive spike of adoption on the first day the new plan was available.

    In addition, Stirman noted there has been a marked increase in the number of teams that are working on projects related to COVID-19 research.

    Of course, the more development teams that are exposed to repositories such as GitHub the more likely it becomes more of those teams will find themselves to varying degree embracing best DevOps practices. Invariably, those bet practices will then find their way into a larger number of enterprise IT projects. Undoubtedly, GitHub views making private repositories available for free as a method to create increased demand for the enterprise edition of its platform down the line. Of course, rival providers of continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platforms will be seeking to convert as many of those projects into enterprise customers as well.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Akamai Extends Scope of DevOps Integrations

    Akamai Extends Scope of DevOps Integrations

    Akamai today extended its DevOps strategy to provide tighter integrations with continuous integration/continuous (CI/CD) platforms and IT automation tools such as Terraform from HashiCorp.

    In addition, Akamai is adding support for serverless computing functions to Akamai EdgeWorkers, a JavaScript-based framework through which application logic can be executed on the edge of the Akamai content delivery network (CDN) now as a microservice.

    Greg Griffiths, product marketing manager for DevOps solutions at Akamai, said the latest additions will make it easier for DevOps teams to view the Akamai CDN as a natural extension for deploying applications. Akamai launched its first DevOps initiative last year. The goal is to make possible for DevOps teams to spin up new properties and make configuration changes from within the context of their CI/CD workflows, he said.

    Terraform support, meanwhile, will make it possible for DevOps teams to programmatically provision and manage properties and DNS zones as code, added Griffiths.

    As part of that effort, the Akamai Pipeline can now synchronize with the Akamai Control Center to capture any manual configuration changes in a way that then allows them to be incorporated into a CI/CD workflow, he noted.

    Akamai has been making a case for deploying applications as close to the network edge as possible using its CDN to reduce network latency. As part of that effort, EdgeWorkers allows developers to spin up microservices as needed. Those microservices can now access data embedded in the function, including all the data from the HTTP request such as cookies, headers, URL and query parameters.

    DevOps teams can now also more easily conduct A/B testing and feature experiments using cached content in addition to delivering different application experiences by modifying the path to cached images and other content based on variables such as customer location or time of day.

    Other new capabilities being added by Akamai include the ability to modify both the path and query arguments for a request and determine to which origin any request should be routed.

    Griffiths said now that more organizations are leveraging the Akamai CDN as a vehicle for delivering applications at the network edge, the next big initiative will be to make it easier to leverage the company’s managed security services to embrace DevSecOps.

    It’s not clear to what degree DevOps teams have embraced CDNs as a vehicle delivering applications. Organizations have, however, been leveraging CDNs to deliver web applications for years now. By providing tighter integration with CI/CD platforms Akamai is essentially making the CDN just another target for deploying applications at the end of a DevOps workflow. That capability may prove critical as organizations move to deploy more application code on edge computing platforms involving use cases that require data to be processed and analyzed in near real-time.

    Of course, Akamai is not the only CDN providers with similar ambitions. It is, however, already the largest, so from a DevOps perspective most organizations will soon encounter an Akamai point of presence somewhere soon, if they have not already.

    — Mike Vizard

  • COVID-19 Pandemic: Appian Offers Free HR App

    COVID-19 Pandemic: Appian Offers Free HR App

    Appian, a provider of a low-code platform for building applications, has decided to make available a free application to help organizations with 1,000 or more employees track healthcare incidents stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Designed mainly for human resources (HR) professionals, the COVID-19 Response Management application is designed to track the health and work status of all employees by geography and department, including their travel history.

    Appian CEO Matt Calkins said that while Appian has built a handful of applications for customers before by request, the company decided to leverage its expertise to provide a free application to help organizations maintain business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic that is forcing employees to work remotely for the foreseeable future. Organizations can either access the COVID-19 Response Management application as a cloud-based service provided by Appian or download and install it themselves, he said.

    Organizations in highly regulated industries that need to still comply with rules concerning personally identifiable information (PII) are likely to want to run the COVID-19 Response Management application in a local data center, noted Calkins. The cloud-based instance of the application runs in an environment that is already certified to be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

    Calkins said the COVID-19 Response Management application is designed to be set up and configured in less than two hours. Because the application was built using low-code tools, COVID-19 Response Management application is highly customizable using the company’s namesake low-code platform, so as the crisis continues to evolve, organizations will be able to extend the application as they best see fit.

    Millions of individuals, unfortunately, may contract the COVID-19 coronavirus or may be unable to work because they need to care for loved ones who have fallen sick in the weeks and months ahead. As organizations race to implement business continuity plans, many of them are likely to discover their existing HR applications were not designed to help manage a highly distributed workforce, which may need to be augmented with little notice. The COVID-19 Response Management application provides a way to manage talent in addition to other HR functions, noted Calkins.

    The Appian application is also designed to enable HR teams to function as the hub around which organizations can build online communities that employees can use to interact and provide mutual support. For example, employees can connect with each other to volunteer their time to go shopping on behalf of employees who may be quarantined.

    As the COVID-19 pandemic intensifies, many organizations are clearly entering unchartered territory. Workforces may be sharply reduced or increased depending on vertical. The number of temporary workers may skyrocket in some cases. Regardless of the outcome, most organizations will need access to applications that enable them to be as flexible as possible to deal with whatever lies ahead. In some cases, organizations may have HR applications in place that enable them to achieve that goal. In most cases, however, it’s probable they don’t.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Coronavirus Response: Atlassian Expands Free Software

    Coronavirus Response: Atlassian Expands Free Software

    Atlassian announced today it will make cloud-based versions of Jira Software, Confluence, Jira Service Desk and Jira Core available for free as part of an effort to assist organizations whose employees are working remotely to help combat the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

    Robert Chatwani, chief marketing officer for Atlassian, said given the current unprecedented situation the company has decided to increase the number of free versions of its software, including Jira project management software, which is widely employed by software development teams.

    The company already makes available free versions of its Trello, Bitbucket and Opsgenie software. Atlassian is hoping that once the current COVID-19 coronavirus crisis subsides, a much broader base of end users including ones from business units will have gained some firsthand experience employing its project management applications and collaboration tools, said Chatwani. Previously, Atlassian revealed it has a goal of having 100 million active users of its software.

    Chatwani said many organizations are finding that having employees working from home is the new normal for the foreseeable future. While regions in Asia appear to be recovering from the initial COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, that does not appear to be the case in other regions anytime soon. Once organizations re-engineer their workflows, they may discover some knowledge workers are more productive working remotely, he noted.

    Less clear right now is whether having most or all employees working remotely is a temporary measure in the furtherance of a business continuity strategy or simply an inevitable future of work that, because of the current crisis, is arriving much earlier than expected.

    Of course, not every employee is psychologically tempered to work from home. Software developers, for example, may be more accustomed to working in isolation than project managers. Chatwani said it will be important for organizations to establish new routines to maintain organizational cohesion, including determining when development teams should launch sprints to build elements of an application. Managers also may want to designate “office hours” during which anyone can contact them online to make sure employees feel they are accessible, he added.

    Organizations should also get used to the idea that children may be both seen and heard while online meetings are occurring, given the fact that millions of children are now being schooled at home, Chatwani noted.

    Many organizations to one degree or another have been relying more on remote workers. There are even some companies that don’t have physical headquarters—all the employees already work remotely. Some of those organizations have even gone so far as to define a time zone around which the organization will standardize on regardless of where employees are physically located.

    Whatever the strategy employed, organizations that hope to succeed in this new climate need to go well beyond ensuring remote network connections are available and secure—they need to find a way to either maintain their existing processes and culture to make sure that whatever product or service they provide continues to be built or delivered in a way that allows the organization to survive and hopefully continue to thrive.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Atlassian Adds No-Code Automation Tool to Jira Cloud

    Atlassian Adds No-Code Automation Tool to Jira Cloud

    Atlassian announced today it has added a no-code tool to enable DevOps teams to make it easier to customize Jira project management software without having to learn how to code.

    Sean Regan, head of growth for software teams at Atlassian, said Automation for Jira will now become a core part of Jira Cloud that will be made available to all 65,000 customers using Jira software. Originally developed by Code Barrell, the tool was acquired by Atlassian last year. Previously, it had been available as an add-on adopted by about 6,500 customers, he said.

    The goal is to enable administrators that track projects to reduce the amount of time they spend on manually entering data. On average, organizations are spending 51 hours a month on administrative tasks involving the management of projects, Regan noted. Organizations should take inventory of those tasks and use Automation for Jira to start automating the tasks that are the most repetitive, he said.

    Automation for Jira, Regan said, is part of a larger ambitious effort to make Jira software accessible to more than 100 million active end users. By employing a visual tool to automate tasks it should become easier for a broader number of organizations to customize processes by defining rules that trigger events. Organizations will not be forced to depend on developers to write code to create those workflows, he noted.

    Automation for Jira

    Automation for Jira is also part of a concerted effort to modernize a venerable Jira project management application that has been widely employed by software development teams for decades. The ultimate goal is to enable software development teams to spend more time building applications versus trying to ascertain the status of any given development project, said Regan.

    The no-code Automation for Jira tool is also designed to integrate with collaboration tools Slack and Microsoft Teams within the context of a set of best DevOps practices. In fact, Regan noted any time there is an issue on a software development project it almost always comes down to a lack of collaboration between all the stakeholders involved.

    There is, of course, a lot more appreciation for project management software among DevOps teams that typically are trying to organize around multiple projects at the same time. A delay on one project might present an opportunity to reallocate resources to accelerate another. That can’t happen, however, if no one is aware of what bottlenecks exist in the first place.

    Not everyone appreciates all the nuances of project management. The less obtrusive project management becomes the more effective it tends to be. Developers are especially notorious for not always updating project management applications, which usually results in project managers having to nag them to share information that other teams are counting on before they can move forward. Hopefully, there may come a day when all project management applications are updated automatically. In the meantime, the less time spent on manual tasks the happier all the members of the software development team are likely to be.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Latest Chef Habitat Release Embraces On-Premises IT

    Latest Chef Habitat Release Embraces On-Premises IT

    Chef today announced that the Chef Habitat automation framework for building and deploying applications can now be used in on-premises IT environments.

    Mike Krasnow, a senior product manager for Chef, said version 1.5 of Habitat makes it possible to now store applications packages and their dependencies locally in addition to the cloud. In addition, pre-built application packages and dependencies from the Builder service can be deployed across multiple on-premises instances.

    An Applications tab in Chef Automate now shows the service groups and instances that are deployed to make it easier to understand what’s deployed where and the health of each service. Both the Habitat Builder installer and the application dashboard are integrated with Chef Automate, which uses the same installer as Chef Habitat.

    Finally, the Habitat Supervisor module is now more stable, easier to configure and manage, and provides improved support for Windows applications.

    Krasnow said Chef has seen a 300% increase in the use of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) instance of Chef Habitat in the last year. Organizations that have embraced Chef Habitat include Alaska Airlines, Rakuten, and Walmart. That rate of adoption should increase now that an on-premises edition is available, he said, including among IT organizations in highly regulated industries that are not allowed to employ cloud services. In fact, at least 70% of all application workloads are still deployed in on-premises IT environments.

    Chef Habitat appeals most to organizations that have embraced best DevOps practices to programmatically deploy applications, said Krasnow. There are rival automation platforms that make use of declarative approaches to automation that appeal more to IT generalists. However, he noted, organizations that want to empower DevOps teams tend to prefer a more programmatic approach.

    For more than a decade now Chef has been driving adoption of IT automation. However, it’s only relatively recently that organizations have been employing IT automation at scale as part of their efforts to embrace best DevOps practices. As interest in IT automation frameworks has risen, so too has the number of options. Some organizations are even employing multiple IT automation frameworks within different business units. They may one day standardize on a single IT automation framework, but many DevOps teams will simply opt to employ the IT automation framework the members of their team already know. If the members of that team in charge of IT operations don’t have a lot of programming expertise, chances are high they will opt for a more declarative approach. DevOps teams that have developers who deploy applications on their own are likely to prefer a more programmatic approach.

    Regardless of the platform chosen, it’s clear the days of manually deploying applications using custom scripts are coming to an end. IT organizations now require an industrial approach to managing IT as a factory. The biggest challenge achieving that goal is no longer the technology but rather the culture of the IT organization.

    — Mike Vizard

  • F5 Networks Launches Next-Gen ADC Based on NGINX

    F5 Networks Launches Next-Gen ADC Based on NGINX

    F5 Networks this week launched version 3.0 of its NGINX application delivery controller (ADC) that adds application programming interface (API) management tools, analytics and monitoring tools, a service mesh, a certificate manager, a developer portal and integrations with multiple continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) platforms.

    Ken Bocchino, director of product management for NGINX at F5 Networks, said as the first major update to the NGINX Controller since F5 Networks acquired NGINX last year, the 3.0 release represents a concerted effort to reduce the total cost of DevOps by bundling many capabilities that previously would have needed to be acquired separately.

    In addition, NGINX Controller 3.0 reduces the complexity associated with building DevOps workflows because all the components that make up NGINX Controller have been pre-integrated, said Bocchino.

    Based on the open source NGINX proxy server, NGINX Controller is the mechanism through which commercial capabilities are provided and supported as part of the NGINX Plus subscription service offered to enterprise IT customers. Previous iterations of ADCs were much more infrastructure-centric than application-centric, noted Bocchino.

    While F5 Networks naturally would prefer IT organizations to consume all those services, Bocchino said the ADC has been designed in a modular fashion to enable organizations to consume services exposed as REST APIs as they see fit. A future version of the NGNIX proxy server will be able to support multiple types of service meshes, including the lighter-weight offering created by the NGINX team that will become available later this year as part of NGINX Controller 3.0, he said.

    Bocchino noted F5 Networks envisions the NGINX Controller playing a major role in driving further convergence across network operations, security and DevOps teams. NGINX Controller 3.0 facilitates that goal by providing a self-service portal along with role-based access controls and modular workflows that eliminate the need for tickets to be issued to achieve every IT task.

    It’s not clear at what rate that convergence is occurring. However, F5 Networks last year published a survey of DevOps and NetOps teams that suggests there is still a wide gap between NetOps and DevOps teams. The survey found only a little more than a third (38%) of DevOps teams cited the “integration of toolsets across vendors/devices” as a challenge to network automation. In contrast, almost half of NetOps respondents (47%) noted a lack of integration as a problem, second only to a lack of automation expertise (49%).

    F5 Networks by acquiring NGINX is betting than most organizations that have already embraced NGINX proxy server software would rather extend those existing capabilities versus replacing their ADC with a new stack of software based on, for example, the rival open source Envoy proxy server being developed under the auspices of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

    How the proxy server war and associated ASC platform wars will play out is still anybody’s guess. What is clear is that DevOps teams will need to access a wide range of programmable networking and security services easily to take DevOps to the next level.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Red Hat Extends Runtimes Middleware Portfolio

    Red Hat Extends Runtimes Middleware Portfolio

    Red Hat has made available the latest instance of Red Hat Runtimes, a suite of lightweight open source components and frameworks that makes it easier to discover the middleware most appropriate for building a specific type of application.

    James Falkner, product marketing director for Runtimes at Red Hat, said as organizations embrace cloud-native application architectures based on microservices it’s become increasingly challenging to determine what middleware to deploy optimally and where. Red Hat Runtimes not only makes it easier to navigate all those options, Falkner said, but all the components and frameworks are certified to be pre-integrated.

    The latest version of Red Hat Runtimes adds support for Open Liberty, a lightweight runtime for building Java applications developed by IBM. Red Hat was acquired last year by IBM.

    The latest installment of Red Hat Runtimes also provides access to what has become a standard distribution of Node.js based on Red Hat Software Collections that will be implemented across all Red Hat offerings.

    Finally, Red Hat has also added support for Red Hat Single Sign-On, an access control framework based on the Keycloak project.

    Falkner said Red Hat Runtimes also serves to reduce the total cost by providing a single subscription through which organizations can access everything from container runtimes to the 3Scale application programming interface (API) management middleware, which Red Hat acquired in 2016.

    Very few IT organizations these days are standardized on a single class of middleware, especially as they embrace microservices-based applications built using containers. Most IT teams for the foreseeable future will need a flexible way to access multiple runtimes in support of everything from monolithic applications based on Java to applications built using Node.js code deployed using Docker containers.

    Rather than a piecemeal approach to the middleware infrastructure required to build, deploy and integrate all those applications, Falkner said Red Hat Runtimes provides a more holistic approach.

    It’s not clear how much or even whether IT organizations are centrally managing middleware in the age of DevOps and the cloud. Historically, many IT organizations preferred to standardize on a single application server platform to deploy various classes of middleware. However, many developers today are deciding what middleware to include within their application stacks without much input from a central IT function.

    Via Red Hat Runtimes, Red Hat is trying to make a case for providing developers with the flexibility they cherish in the form of a subscription service that provides IT teams with a modicum of control over what middleware gets employed.

    Tensions between DevOps teams and central IT organizations have arguably never been higher. In fact, many DevOps teams are operating within lines of business that are outside the direct control of centralized IT. As such, the level of standardization that can be imposed by central IT organizations has become more constrained. Many centralized IT organizations are now trying to influence middleware platform decisions rather than outright make decrees that might get ignored anyway.

    Regardless of the middleware platform choice that ultimately gets made, however, the one thing that most centralized IT teams will have to come to terms with is finding a way to support it.

    — Mike Vizard

  • 5th Annual DevOps Dozen Awards: And the Winner Is …

    5th Annual DevOps Dozen Awards: And the Winner Is …

    We are pleased to announce the 2019 DevOps Dozen honorees. I would say DevOps Dozen winners, but truth be told every single one of the finalists in this year’s DevOps Dozen was a winner.

    When I launched the DevOps Dozen in 2015, I hoped they would grow to reflect and recognize the best of the best in the maturing DevOps space. This year, there is no doubt in my mind that the winners are unsurpassed in the DevOps community. In fact, the whole process of nominations was open, from the public making the selections of finalists to the criteria the judges used, with the results showing they really do represent the best in the community.

    Congratulations to the honorees in the 12 categories—it is quite an accomplishment to be selected. Congratulations also to all of the finalists, who should be proud to be part of such an impressive list.

    Since the nomination process began, our team has gone through thousands of votes to pick out the finalists in each category. It was not an easy task, as we couldn’t automate (DevOps) it; we had to do it by hand. Also, many thanks to the judges—Jayne Groll of the DevOps Institute, Mitchell Ashley of Accelerated Strategies (more on that soon) and Charlene O’Hanlon, managing editor of MediaOps—for making the hard calls. Thanks also to everyone here at DevOps.com for helping out. Technically, I was a judge this year as well but only voted in the case of a tie. With three other judges, I was spared from having to pick any of the winners this year.

    So, without further ado, here are the 2019 DevOps Dozen winners:

    Best DevOps Solution Provider

    The DevOps Dozen award for the Best DevOps Solution Provider for 2019 goes to GitLab. This year was a particularly hard year to pick a winner. There are so many truly great DevOps solution providers. But GitLab has really separated itself from the pack, from the breadth of its vision for an end-to-end solution to the many different ways that GitLab operates as a company. The venture community has certainly been impressed, investing more than $300 million in the company. The company is literally an open book, from its totally remote workforce and more.  But it is not just that GitLab is different; GitLab has captured a broad swath of the market who feel bought into the company.

    GitLab has fundamentally changed the way development, security and ops teams collaborate and build software—helping customers on their DevOps journey in ways no other company can—by providing a single application for the entire DevOps life cycle. The GitLab solution is the result of the collaboration between thousands of community contributors and feedback from the more than 100,000 organizations that have adopted GitLab to power their DevOps transformations. The GitLab community contributes code, documentation, translation, design and product ideas based on their real-world challenges, making GitLab more useful and valuable. Because of the community behind GitLab, in many cases, we see rapid adoption through better developer experience and collaboration.

    Best DevOps Practitioner of the Year

    Jasmine James is our winner for the DevOps Practitioner of the Year. Jasmine is the IT manager and head of Delta’s DevOps Center of Excellence at Delta Airlines, where she administers, documents and supports the development tools to enable the faster delivery of quality software.

    I met Jasmine at one of the many DevOps conferences I attended and had a chance to interview her. I remember telling some of our people how impressed I was with this young woman’s poise, intelligence, ability to communicate and enthusiasm. She embodies the term “star power.” I’ve seen Jasmine at several other events and she continues to impress. I am not surprised by her award for this category.

    Jasmine has been in IT for approximately eight years, a journey that has included numerous different roles ranging from Q.E. automation and engineering at a large telecom company to her current role as a DevOps leader at Delta Airlines. In 2019, Jasmine had the opportunity to share Delta’s DevOps and Cloud adoption journey on stage at several different events including DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas, GitLab Commit London and the keynote at GitLab Commit Brooklyn. Jasmine’s work at Delta was also covered in quite a few articles that were recently published, including “Mayfield CIO Insights: The Journey to Cloud Native – 3 Key Concepts,” “Nexus Innovator: Jasmine James of Delta,” and “GitLab Commit Brooklyn: DevOps as a Single Application.” Also, check out her recent podcast at Software Engineering Daily as well as recent interviews with Digital Anarchist at GitLab Commit Brooklyn and DevOps Enterprise Summit Las Vegas, where she discusses the process of changing the developer culture within Delta, as well as what it is like to build software for an airline. Jasmine recently added an MBA to her professional portfolio from LSU Shreveport, and has been on the mission to empower developers and enable them to develop secure software: “I consider myself to be, like, an advocate for developers and just making sure that they’re enabled to deliver awesome stuff.”

    Best DevOps Solution Provider Executive

    Shlomi Ben Haim, co-founder and CEO of JFrog, is the winner of the Best DevOps Solution Executive of the Year.

    I consider Shlomi a close friend of mine and couldn’t be happier to see him win this award again. But my feelings for him and our friendship aren’t why Shlomi repeats as DevOps solution provider executive of the year. JFrog is a dynamic industry leader that continues to expand its offering in the DevOps space, but ask anyone what its real strength is and they will tell you it is the amazing culture of the “Frogs.” It is not just the employees themselves; the magic and enthusiasm for JFrog and Liquid Software are felt throughout its vast community.

    This best in the industry culture is directly attributable to Shlomi Ben Haim. The company and its culture are a direct reflection of his own outlook and what he brings to our community every day of the year. He is truly deserving of this honor.

    Shlomi brings more than 20 years of experience in building profitable, high-growth information technology companies. He is a recognized visionary in the DevOps space, having guided JFrog from its inception with just three co-founders (along with Yoav Landman and Fred Simon) to a privately held, global DevOps company with a valuation of more than $1 billion. With the releases of the JFrog Platform, JFrog Pipelines, JFrog Xray and the JFrog Container Registry in the last two years, Shlomi continues to foresee market dynamics and push JFrog forward to deliver next-generation solutions. His next maneuver is into the emerging concept of continuous updates and “leaping” into the DevOps for IoT space. Under his leadership, JFrog has grown revenue 500% in the past three years and the solution has expanded its reach to more than 6,000 customers, including more than 70% of the Fortune 500 as well as rapidly growing JFrog’s DevOps tooling usage to millions of developers worldwide. Shlomi’s efforts have guided JFrog and the DevOps tooling market into mainstream industry recognition, with 2019 awards from the Forbes Cloud 100, Deloitte 500, 451 Research, IDC, Bank of America and more.

    Best DevOps.com Podcast of the Year

    DevOps Chat: CI/CD Scalability Lessons with CircleCI featuring Rob Zuber, CTO of CircleCI was the Best DevOps.com Podcast of the Year.

    While I would have liked to see my podcast with Rob win this award, the podcast he and Mitchell Ashley did was truly worthy.

    Additionally, Rob and the entire CircleCI team are well-deserving of recognition. 2019 has been a watershed year for the team there. They have truly broken into the top tier of providers in the CI/CD space based on just about every criteria you could use. Rob’s leadership is a driving force behind that success.

    Rob Zuber is a 20-year veteran of software startups—a four-time founder and three-time CTO. CircleCI is now the largest build platform in the world, used by more than 600,000 developers and 30,000 companies worldwide. Rob leads a team of 100+ engineers distributed around the globe across 20 countries. Similar to what you heard in his podcast episode, Rob’s ethos of transparency pulls through in all his work. He regularly contributes to various industry sites with practical feedback for his peers and recently pioneered a video series called “Drawn Out Conversations,” in which he interviews other leaders who share their candid approaches to software development and teams.

    Best DevOps Book/eBook

    The winner for the Best DevOps Book/eBook for the year is “The Unicorn Project – A Novel about Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data,” by Gene Kim.

    Some may not be surprised that DevOps legend Gene Kim’s follow-up to “The Phoenix Project” won this award. But make no mistake, there were a lot of great books on DevOps published in 2019, including several from Gene’s IT Revolution.

    At the end of the day, though, “The Unicorn Project” is a category-defining novel that takes a look at the world of the Phoenix Project from another angle, with a more developer-focused lens.

    I know firsthand how much effort Gene put into this book, including gathering feedback from so many leaders in the DevOps space to make sure the message, the methodologies and outcomes described were on target. In every sense, “The Unicorn Project” is a worthy follow-on to “The Phoenix Project.” It has sold roughly 50,000 copies worldwide and is rated 4.5 stars on Amazon with 74 customer reviews and 4.5 stars on GoodReads with 101 reviews. It is a Wall Street Journal Bestseller and is ranked #98 in USA Today‘s list of Best Selling Books.

    Top DevOps Evangelist

    Rosalind Radcliffe is our winner for the Top DevOps Evangelist for 2019. Rosalind is an IBM Distinguished Engineer, Chief Architect for CLM and DevOps and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology and the Academy Leadership team.

    Rosalind is perhaps best-known as the IBM Enterprise Systems Z DevOps expert. Some still don’t recognize what has been done to make today’s modern mainframes work so well in a DevOps environment, but that’s in spite of Rosalind’s tireless efforts: She has traveled the world evangelizing that there is very little you can’t do with an IBM Z system from a modern DevOps perspective.

    I have interviewed Rosalind many times over the past six years. I am always impressed first of all with her intelligence, but also with her enthusiasm and exuberance in bringing the DevOps-for-mainframes story to market. She is truly a bright light in the DevOps universe and so very deserving of this recognition.

    Rosalind is seen as the mainframe DevOps go-to person and as such her conference videos are used by clients as part of their internal DevOps events. Her focus is on much more than just the mainframe, but also bringing DevOps to large enterprises. She is a requested speaker for DevOps at IBM’s Executive Leadership training events to help senior leadership understand how to transform in support of DevOps. Rosalind works tirelessly with customers, analysts, colleagues and vendors to help them understand that DevOps on the mainframe is no different than DevOps in the cloud or on any other distributed platform. She has written several “DevOps for Dummies” books and works with the local chapter of Women in Technology to encourage women to be leaders in this competitive field.

    Best DevOps Transformation

    HSBC was the judges’ choice for Best DevOps Transformation for 2019. HSBC has done amazing new and innovative work to implement DevOps with Google Anthos. The company is also a very active partner in transforming DevOps not only in its own company but within the DevOps industry.

    HSBC has taken a lot of risks and moved boldly forward with its own DevOps digital transformation. The company has a number of new development projects underway to build new and improved applications for its customers, and has evolved from being a financial services organization to also being a leading IT organization. Much is said about the nimble startups that call themselves fintech companies, but HSBC is a nimble giant that deserves inclusion in that category also. Check out this interview with Darryl West, Group CIO, about how HSBC started its journey by simplifying its IT architecture, introducing DevOps and Agile ways of working and using the newest technologies to improve how the company interacts with its customers.

    HSBC was also recognized by CloudBees for the success of its DevOps transformation and use of the CloudBees products. The company truly represents a bright spot in a growing galaxy of successful DevOps transformations in the financial industry.

    Best DevOps Transformation Leader

    Courtney Kissler, vice president, Global Technology at Nike, is our winner for the Best DevOps Transformation Leader of the year.

    I have known Courtney for five-plus years as a result of her presenting at Gene Kim’s DevOps Enterprise Summit. During this time I have seen her lead groups bringing remarkable DevOps transformations at Nordstrom, Starbucks and Nike. In my humble opinion, she is one of the most accomplished and effective leaders of DevOps transformation in the world today.

    At Nike, Courtney is focusing on transforming the organization in alignment with a consumer-direct strategy, with some amazing results. She sponsored and hosted the first-ever Internal DevOps Day at Nike, and based on the feedback and success of the first event, she recently hosted a second event that included industry speakers and hosted workshops. She authored and published a Coursera course on DevOps practices, especially the mindset shift, highlighting her personal journey and experience. The course is currently rated at 4.8/5 stars and has received quite a bit of feedback, which has helped broaden her network and reach into the community. She also wrote a foreword for the Shingo Award-winning book “Accelerate.”

    She is also a member of the DevOps Enterprise Summit planning committee, where she focuses on senior leadership and demonstrating the partnership between technology and business, connecting key leaders to the community. She also contributes to the DOES conference through panels, facilitating lean coffee breaks and a new part of the program called “DevOps Confessions.” Courtney also contributes to the community through the DevOps Enterprise Forum papers, where she shares her expertise to give back to the community.

    Best New DevOps Solution Company

    The Best New DevOps Solution Company for 2019 is Armory. Armory seeks to become the enterprise Spinnaker company.

    I became aware of Armory at an Insight Ignite conference in early 2019. I met the CEO DROdio and instantly saw the “We want to change the world” attitude that I have seen in successful entrepreneurs for more 20 years.

    Since then, Armory has continued to evangelize bringing Spinnaker, which was developed by Netflix and Google, to market, helping large enterprises accelerate their CI/CD transformation and go-to-market.

    2019 was a big year for Armory as the company announced significant funding and customer wins and really established its presence in the market. This company is one that bears watching in the months and years to come—Armory has the ability to change the game.

    Best DevOps Conference of the Year

    DevOps World | Jenkins World was selected as the Best DevOps Conference of the year.

    This is quite an accomplishment, considering the quality and popularity of several of the other DevOps conferences including DevOps Enterprise Summit and KubeCon/CloudNativeCon, among others.

    The two DevOps World |Jenkins World events (one in San Francisco, one in Lisbon) won our judges’ votes, though. The DevOps World events represent a great balance of training/learning, great session material and a broad focus on all levels of the DevOps value stream. Whether you are a seasoned DevOps executive or a newbie DevOps engineer, there is something for nearly everyone at DevOps World/Jenkins World.

    Best DevOps Presentation of the Year

    “Workplace engagement and countering employee burnout,” a presentation at DevOps Enterprise Summit London 2019, is the winner of the Best DevOps Presentation for 2019.

    While there were many great presentations on various aspects of DevOps that were worthy of winning this award in 2019, this presentation and panel transcended DevOps and really touched on an important subject across all walks of life and careers.

    Employee burnout is recognized by the World Health Organization as a valid condition. At the very end of the spectrum, the results can be truly life-threatening. More often, this condition can sabotage the success of your team and organization.

    What made this presentation so powerful was the panel presenting it. Featuring three PhDs, including Dr. Nicole Forsgren, CEO and chief scientist, DevOps Research and Assessment LLC; Dr. Christina Maslach, professor of psychology, emerita, University of California, Berkeley, and a recognized leader in this space; Dr. Steve Spear, principal, HVE LLC; and Gene Kim, it as a great dive into the subject and one that I urge you to watch on the IT Revolution YouTube channel.

    Following this session, I had the honor of interviewing the panel members (minus Gene Kim) and it was also a fantastic dive into the subject. You can view that on Digital Anarchist.

    Best DevOps.com Article of the Year

    DevOps.com article “Mainframes: The Cloud Before the Cloud,” authored by Bob Reselman, is the winner for the Best DevOps.com Article of the Year.

    In his article, Bob shares his insights on why the mainframe was the cloud before the cloud and why the mainframe is a perfect resource for today’s and tomorrow’s cloud computing infrastructure.

    You may know Bob also as the creative genius behind DevOps.com’s RoelBob cartoons, but he is far from just a cartoonist. He has almost 40 years of experience in the tech space. He teaches at several universities and schools and is a sought-after speaker at conferences. He writes and speaks with the voice of experience and expertise.

    Bob is a nationally known software developer, system architect and technical writer/journalist. He has written four books on computer programming and dozens of articles about topics related to software development technologies and techniques, as well as the culture of software development.

    There you have them, the 12 winners of this year’s DevOps Dozen. Thanks to everyone who voted and nominated candidates. Stay tuned for 2020 DevOps Dozen and, as always, thanks for supporting DevOps.com and the rest of the MediaOps family of communities. If you have questions, please write us DD@devops.com.

    — Alan Shimel