In what turned out to be a much bigger job than we anticipated, we have gone through the numbers and checked them twice (actually more like 20 times). All of us here at devopsy.kinsta.cloud are happy and proud to announce the winners of the 2016 DevOps Dozen!
With thousands of votes cast in just the finals alone, it was a daunting task to verify votes and select the winners in each of the 12 categories for awards this year. Also several of the categories had incredibly close races with just a few votes separating the winners from the other finalists. But there can be only one, winner in each category that is.
So without further adieu, here are the winners of the 2016 DevOps Dozen awards:
Best DevOps Open Source Project: Jenkins
The DevOps world is chock full of great open source projects. Many of them have huge communities who are very passionate and involved. The Jenkins community holds its own with any of them. More importantly, Jenkins seems to be at the center of the DevOps/CD world.
Also congrats are in order for CloudBees who while not managing the Jenkins project do a great job of shepherding and nurturing it.
Best DevOps Commercial Solution: Automic
Another extremely competitive category with so many great finalists. Automic was the choice of the voters here and I guess to CA Technologies as well, who just closed on the acquisition of Automic last week.
We can’t move on without acknowledging and congratulating the other finalists in this category as well as the bevy of DevOps tools and tool vendors in the market though.
Best DevOps Company Executive: Barry Crist, CEO, Chef
Well deserved recognition for one of the leaders of our industry. I still remember when Barry was first announced as the CEO of Chef, as they embarked on a major rebranding effort, shedding OpsCode and firmly moving to an enterprise solution path.
Along with CTO Adam Jacob, Chef continues to lead with innovation in both product and go to market. In many ways Chef represents the best of the DevOps community and Barry has a lot to do with that.
Most Innovative DevOps Solution Provider: Ranger4
OK I have to admit it, I was pulling for Ranger4 in this category. Helen Beal and Steve Green are great people who were out there evangelizing and leading in DevOps consulting way before the current Cambrian explosion of DevOps consultants we see today. Their DevOps Liftoff Workshop and their latest, DevOps for CEOs, are both high water marks in the industry. Congrats to the entire Ranger4 team.
Make no mistake though that DevOps consulting is a rapidly growing market with many different solution providers out there. Ranger4 on top of their a first mover advantage continues to blaze a path that others follow.
There is no shortage of innovation in the DevOps space, but what IBM has done with the Bluemix Garage Method is really ingenious. It is not software or hardware, it is not SaaS, it is truly a methodology.
The method takes IBM’s lessons learned during their own DevOps transformation, combined with tools and processes, to form a complete blueprint that allows organizations to “innovate like a startup, while scaling to the enterprise.”
Top DevOps Evangelist: Jason Hand, VictorOps
Again a very close margin of victory here, but a well deserved accolade for evangelist/author Jason Hand of VictorOps. Luckily, for VictorOps they don’t pay Jason by the mile as it seems he is constantly on the road. I don’t remember the DevOps Days or other DevOps event where I didn’t see Jason there. Somehow in between all of this travel, Jason also found time to write a book, ChatOps.
We are blessed in the DevOps field to have many worthy recipients for this award, but kudos for Jason for being the people’s choice here.
Successful DevOps Transformation: Nationwide
Many of our stories here on devopsy.kinsta.cloud, as well as just about every presentation at Gene Kim’s DevOps Enterprise Summits are about successful DevOps transformations. Name the vertical and there is probably a DevOps transformation story you have heard from one or more organizations in that vertical.
Nationwide is a DevOps transformation story that we here at devopsy.kinsta.cloud are very familiar with. Primarily through the efforts of Carmen DeArdo who is one of the leaders of that transformation. We have interviewed Carmen a number of times and for me the way Nationwide has rolled out DevOps in a deliberate manner across the organization and still does so today is truly a model to be emulated. Congrats to the Nationwide DevOps team. When it comes to DevOps, “Nationwide is on your side (sorry couldn’t resist).”
Best New DevOps Solution Company: DBMaestro
Winning the “rookie of the year” in an industry that is itself still immature is no easy task. There seems to be a new DevOps company coming out of the woodwork everyday. But DBMaestro has managed to stand out from the crowd. Pioneering in the “DevOps for the database” market, DBMaestro has gained attention not just with a great product/service, but also by producing high quality content to help evangelize and educate the DBA market about DevOps.
Of course the thing about winning best new company is now the pressure is on. We expect big things from DBMaestro going forward. Can’t wait to see what they do for an encore.
DevOps Transformation Executive of the Year: Angel Diaz, IBM
Dr. Angel Diaz is a charismatic, dynamic leader at IBM. He is VP of Cloud Architecture and Technology. In that role Angel’s team pioneered IBM’s BlueMix platform. Hearing the story how Bluemix came to be is a great story of innovation and entrepreneurial inspiration.
Angel and his colleagues were able to move “Big Blue” and teach the elephant to dance by adopting Bluemix. Not just the Bluemix platform, but also such innovations as the Bluemix Garage and the Bluemix Garage Method. Dr. Diaz is not afraid to take chances and innovate to keep IBM at the forefront of technology. This award is well deserved for leading a massive DevOps transformation that has not only made IBM a leader in offering DevOps solutions to market, but also having IBM eat its own DevOps dogfood.
Best DevOps Presentation of the Year: Better, Faster, and Cheaper. How? by Damon Edwards & John Willis
Again, how blessed are we in the DevOps space to have such a wealth of great presentations to pick from? Whether they be slides from webinars or video from the many, many conferences around the world, there are some really great presentations that inform and educate us all.
One presentation stood out among them this year. It happens to be one that I was lucky enough to catch while in London for the 2016 DevOps Enterprise Summit. Damon Edwards and John Willis (who literally had just stepped off a redeye from the US and rushed over from the airport) delivered what I have come to call “2 out of 3 ain’t bad, but why settle”. To me it is the best way to show what the advantages of DevOps. Why you can have both better, faster and cheaper (and might I add more secure).
Of course Damon and John have been delivering killer DevOps presentations for years now and this is just the latest in the line. Both John and Damon are very deserving of this award and congratulations to them.
Best DevOps Book/eBook of the Year: The DevOps Handbook, Gene Kim, John Willis, Jez Humble and Patrick Debois
While there are several great DevOps books that came out last year, one really was in a league of its own. The highly and long anticipated companion/sequel to the Phoenix Project, The DevOps Handbook has lived up to the expectations of the industry. Gene Kim assembled a DevOps superband of rockstars to help him as co-authors and they delivered a great book.
The DevOps Handbook is a collection of over 40 case studies broken into several categories. It claims to show, “How To Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, & Security in Technology Organizations” and it succeeds on every level. The DevOps Handbook will be a required component of DevOps collections for years to come.
Best devopsy.kinsta.cloud Article of the Year: 5 Things DevOps is NOT by Shelbee Smith-Eigenbrode
While not the story with the most views, 5 Things DevOps is NOT struck a chord with our readers. It was one of the most widely commented articles of the hundreds of articles we published in 2016. Additionally, it has a long tail in social media with comments on Linked In, Facebook and Twitter as well.
Shelbee Smith-Eigenbrode hasn’t written a lot of articles for us here at devopsy.kinsta.cloud (hint, hint), but she brings a real life view of DevOps in the field that she has learned in her role at IBM. It is this hands on view that I think allowed her to capture the sentiments in this article that so many identified with.
Congrats to Shelbee and hope this encourages her and you to consider contributing your own thoughts on DevOps to us here on devopsy.kinsta.cloud. We are always looking for quality content. You can write us at editor@devops.com with your thoughts on contributing your own article of the year.
Well there you have it. A dozen winners in the 2016 DevOps Dozen awards. Congrats to all of our winners and also congrats to all of our finalists. This was such a strong class of finalists.
The trophies are already on their way to the winners and we hope to see pics of them on the desks of the winners soon!
The DevOps Dozen for 2017 nominations will start in August so stay tuned for details if you are interested in throwing your hat in the ring for next year.
— Alan Shimel
