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  • DOES17 Speakers Share Insights on Live Podcast

    DOES17 Speakers Share Insights on Live Podcast

    As DevOps Enterprise Summit San Francisco (DOES17), slated for Nov. 13-15, inches closer, event founding partner Electric Cloud hosted a special episode of Continuous Discussions (#c9d9), featuring some of the conference speakers. During the discussion, the speakers shared some of their recent DevOps transformation stories and a bit about what to expect during their talks at the conference.

    The panel included:

    • John Esser, senior director of IT and data center operations at AdvancedMD;
    • Gary McKay, scrum master at Somos;
    • Aloisio Rocha, agile product owner at NetEnt;
    • Manish Aggarwal, software engineering manager at Intel;
    • Marc Priolo, global software configuration manager at Urban Science;
    • J. Paul Reed, managing partner at Release Engineering Approaches;
    • Marc Hornbeek, principal consultant – DevOps at Trace3;
    • Gary Gruver, founder and CEO of Gary Gruver Consulting; and
    • our very own Sam Fell and Anders Wallgren.

    Here is a list of the most memorable takeaways from the discussion:

    Every company is different, so approaching a DevOps transformation will vary based on the organization, explains Esser. “Every company has a different set of constraints, a different culture, different things they value. So you can’t just say, ‘Oh, I’ve got this DevOps hammer, and I’m going to start pounding away.’ We understand the principles, but how to apply those and how to execute those principles are quite different.”

    McKay on the success of moving from mainframe to microservices with his “Team Dragon” concept: “Team Dragon was formulated to make sure that our CI/CD process as well as our deployment and release processes were consistent. Coming from a mainframe environment to, say, a distributed microservices environment, there are differences not only in culture, but processes and technology. We wanted to make sure all that was managed efficiently and effectively, so that we could do deployments when we needed to do deployments.”

    Rocha on the NetEnt DevOps journey and what inspired the transformation: “We’ve gone from a place where the business was expanding, but deployments and deliveries were not scaling with the business to working on how to tackle it with automation, working with the deployments and making the deployments visible to everyone.”

    Aggarwal will be talking about the DevOps journey at Intel at DOES17: “I will be covering as to how a lot of organizations, including Intel, are trying to board the journey of DevOps. They are successful to an extent, but how to make sure that the quality, which is the sole purpose of this journey, does not get left behind.”

    Priolo on his pipeline-as-a-service strategy: “We have a pipeline-as-a-service strategy. That’s where we want to make sure that our developers can concentrate on developing instead of trying to figure out how their code is getting into our production environment.”

    Gruver’s simple advice on starting your DevOps transformation: “In the beginning, you need to create some positive momentum. You need to find the things that are the most broken in the development and deployment operations. You need to highlight them. You need to get them fixed. Then you need to market those changes, so that you get some positive momentum for the transformation.”

    Don’t forget about the human factor of release engineering, says Reed: “[At DOES17] we’re going to be going through a little bit of the human factors that are related to release engineering. There’s a couple of facets of that. It’s sort of, ‘How do you go about doing the work,’ and then also a bit about how we treat others, the net system.”

    It’s important to include all teams on your transformation journey, per McKay: “The secret is inclusiveness. Making sure that the mainframe team is part of the microservices process and making sure that we, in our haste to get things done very quickly and very effectively, make sure that we bring them in. We make sure that their roles are purposeful and that they’re part of the process and not just, ‘Oh, you’re just some mainframe guys. We’re just going to ignore you.’”

    Esser on the core values of DevOps: “DevOps as a whole is not limited just to an architecture. DevOps, at its core, is about working better together and increasing the flow of value across the whole value pipeline.”

    It’s important to find the right balance between allowing your developers to be unique, but also adhering to the rules, says Priolo: “The real challenge is trying to find out a way to allow developers to still have their snowflake ability, while still complying with the standards of the company. It’s not to make everything stringent and follow the same exact path. It’s to create a pipeline that gives them the flexibility, but still gives us the ability to do auditing, to make sure that the code is being checked at its proper place.”

    Sometimes it takes a big mistake or bug to make you realize you need DevOps, explains Rocha: “Our process was intense before, to say the least, especially when some scary bug came or a heavy compliance requirement came in that we had to fulfill in a short amount of time. That made us realize we have to fix this.”

    Wow – Aggarwal’s team at Intel went from almost complete manual testing to 100 percent automation in seven years: “When we started about seven years ago, 99 percent of our testing was manual, and everything was repetitive. The work was getting more challenging, and the sheer amount of it was growing with every release. So it was very important to bring that under control. The only way of doing that was end-to-end automation. When I say, ‘end-to-end,’ it’s not 99 percent. It’s 100 percent totally touchless automation.”


    Reed on the human factor of versioning: “Versioning really is about humans communicating with each other. They’re trying to encode information into that version number, which is, I think, one of the reasons you see people bikeshedding that a lot.”
    DevOps can expose your longstanding problems, says Gruver: “When you start trying to increase the frequency of build/test cycles or deploy cycles, you see inefficiencies repeating. You see the trends. There’s a bunch of tools in the DevOps toolbox that enable you to go after that.”


    Moving from monolith to microservices is not an overnight transition, explains Wallgren: “Time and time again we hear the difficulties that everybody has with legacy applications or monolithic applications. The transition away from mainframes is not an overnight kind of thing. They’re not going anywhere, anytime soon.”

    There’s still value in mainframes, and getting that to customers is key, explains Fell: “There’s a ton of value locked up in mainframes and being able to get that out to other people in a service-oriented sort of way. It’s a hard migration to do, but that cultural aspect of making teams feel like they’re comfortable working with one another is critical to getting through that part of the process.”

    Watch the full episode:

    About the Author / Anders Wallgren

    Anders Wallgren is chief technology officer at Electric Cloud. Anders has over 25 years’ experience designing and building commercial software. Prior to joining Electric Cloud, he held executive positions at Aceva, Archistra, and Impresse and management positions at Macromedia (MACR), Common Ground Software, and Verity (VRTY), where he played critical technical leadership roles in delivering award winning technologies such as Macromedia’s Director 7. Anders holds a B.SC from MIT.

  • BMC to Infuse AI Across Software Portfolio

    BMC to Infuse AI Across Software Portfolio

    At its recent BMC Exchange event, BMC Software announced it will be infusing machine learning algorithms and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies across its entire portfolio of IT operations software.

    The first instance of BMC software to make use of machine learning algorithms is the latest version of TrueSight AIOps platform, which ingests data from multiple data sources to automate processes across BMC service desk, IT operations and tools for managing DevOps processes. BMC also is working with IBM to employ the cognitive computing services known as the IBM Watson cloud service across its portfolio.

    In addition, the company launched TrueSight Cloud Cost Control, a tool for managing and tracking usage of cloud services across multiple providers, and BMC SecOps Policy Service, which easier to embed compliance and testing via an external service that gets included in their software development processes.

    Finally, BMC announced it has signed an alliance with Amazon Web Services (AWS) under which the two companies will work to accelerate the migration of application workloads to the AWS public cloud.

    Dan Streetman, a senior vice president for worldwide sales and marketing at BMC, says his company is developing a product strategy around three major themes:

    • IT organizations will require management tools that will work across multiple clouds;
    • As part of general “shift left” developers now expect to be able to programmatically invoke IT operations and security services; and
    • IT professionals now expect the tools they use to manage IT to have the same types of advanced capabilities that consumer applications provide via speech interfaces such as Apple Siri or Microsoft Cortana. Various IT and customer service desks also soon will use speech interfaces to provide a highly automated self-service experience to end users.

    In fact, given the complexity of the IT tasks that now need to be managed, Streetman says a race is now on between IT vendors to live up to those expectations. Much less of a concern, he says, is any notion that AI technologies might one day replace IT professionals that by and large are already overtaxed; rather, it is apparent that IT vendors are now being evaluated on their ability to maximize existing investments in IT professionals that are already in short supply. The real opportunity is to free IT professionals to enable them to concentrate on higher-value tasks.

    Naturally, it remains to be seen how various AI technologies will impact the management of IT. It certainly will take a while for IT administrators to put their faith in AI. But as those technologies continue to mature, there may soon come a day when IT professionals look back with wonder at all the things they used to have to accomplish one manual task at a time.

    — Mike Vizard

  • GitHub Applies Data Science to Managing Code

    GitHub Applies Data Science to Managing Code

    Over the last several years GitHub has emerged as one of the primary repositories around which application development now revolves. At its recent GitHub Universe 2017 conference, the company revealed how it is extending that central role to provide DevOps teams with the addition of a dependency graph that can be employed to alert DevOps teams when a module of code has been updated and a security alert service that will notify them anytime a patch has been made available for a specific module.

    Miju Han, engineering manager for data science for GitHub, says both new capabilities are examples of how the company is applying advanced algorithms and data science techniques to make it easier to manage DevOps processes that revolve around GitHub.

    In addition, Han says GitHub is making available a news feed through which DevOps teams can track updates to groups of modules stored in the repository, as well as a tool through which they can explore a curated set of modules.

    Han says his company intends to combine a variety of emerging data science tools to simplify the daily workflow that revolves around GitHub. As the repository has become more widely used, the sheer volume of code and related updates a DevOps team is supposed to track has become, in many cases, overwhelming. That’s why the company is now pouring resources in several data science research projects with an eye toward making it simpler to navigate the repository.

    The latest annual edition of an Octoverse report published by GitHub finds that there are now more than 24 million developers in 1.5 million organizations around the world accessing 67 million GitHub repositories. A total of 25 million of those repositories are public. The most popular programming languages in use across GitHub are JavaScript (2.3 million projects); Python (1 million projects); Java (986,000 projects) and Ruby (870,000 projects). In terms of pull requests, GitHub notes that Python surpassed Java in popularity in the last year. The company also notes that half of the largest companies in the U.S. based on revenue are employing GitHub repositories.

    There is no shortage of repositories being employed inside and out of enterprise IT organizations, including an enterprise edition of GitHub that the company claims has been implemented by 45 percent of the Fortune 100 list of the world’s largest companies.

    Arguably, the biggest challenging many organizations now face is trying to reconcile the various code repositories in use. Just about every provider of an application development platform provides access to a code repository. In addition, providers of everything from container frameworks to application lifecycle management (ALM) often provide similar capabilities. Keeping track of what version of any given piece of code resides where at any given time has become a significant challenge.

    The good news is that providers of repositories are starting to address that issue on their own platforms, which means it stands to reason that one day soon tools for managing code across heterogeneous repositories may not be all the far off. In the meantime, DevOps teams can take some comfort in the fact that the management tools they rely to manage all the code are about to become a whole lot smarter.

    — Mike Vizard

  • New Relic Delivers on AI Promise to Automate IT Operations

    New Relic Delivers on AI Promise to Automate IT Operations

    New Relic at a FutureStack 2017 conference unveiled an instance of its monitoring tools that employs machine learning technologies and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) to provide advice on how to optimize an IT environment.

    Nadya Duke Boone, director of product management for New Relic, says New Relic Applied Intelligence (NRAI) will be made available as part of the company’s Digital Intelligence Platform. In addition, New Relic is making available three dedicated NRAI capabilities in the form of Radar, NRQL Baseline Alerting and New Relic APM Error Profiles services. These services are designed to help IT operations teams spot abnormal behavior across billions of pieces of data and predict where problems may arise. The services ultimately will surface prescriptive recommendations for problems before they occur.

    The goal, says Duke Boone, is to leverage New Relic’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) approach to IT monitoring tools democratize access to AI technologies. That’s possible, she says, because of the massive amount of data New Relic collects. That data is then fed into machine learning algorithms to detect patterns indicative of a variety of potential issues.

    Duke Boone says that intelligence is then delivered as a personalized Radar news feed that is similar to a social media news feed. That news alert might, for example, might inform an IT administrator that, based on characteristics of their IT environment, an issue is likely to arise. IT operations teams also have the option to integrate that Radar news feed with a collaboration platform such as Slack to alert the rest of the IT operations team to a potential issue.

    NRQL Baseline Alerting allows IT operations team to set thresholds for specific applications that when exceeded will generate an alert. New Relic APM Error Profiles allows IT administrators to launch queries against NRAI to detect potential issues that might arise from outlier applications in the IT environment, adds Duke Boone.

    New Relic doesn’t see AI replacing IT operations teams as much as augmenting them, Duke Boone notes. Most organizations can’t hire enough IT staff to manage their IT environment. As those IT environments become more complex, it’s becoming clear that IT professionals will need to leverage AI technologies to keep all the applications they deployed running optimally, she says.

    New Relic has been investing extensively in AI ever since it previewed these capabilities in the form of a Project Seymour initiative it revealed last year. Now the company and its rivals are locked in an arms race to develop and implement machine learning algorithms that should enable IT operations teams to manage applications at unprecedented levels of scale.

    In some quarters AI is viewed as an existential threat to the IT operations teams. In reality, AI will be used to automatically resolve low-level issues that collectively conspire to rob IT organizations of the time they need to focus on new innovative ideas that add value to the business. In fact, assuming many of those issues will be soon disappear it’s conceivable that all the drudgery associated with managing IT today made soon just fade away.

    — Mike Vizard

  • Fast Pass: Your Ultimate Guide to the Best of Jenkins World

    Fast Pass: Your Ultimate Guide to the Best of Jenkins World

    At the end of the month, Jenkins users and DevOps professionals from around the world will head to San Francisco for the annual Jenkins World conference, taking place Aug. 28-31. The conference lasts four days, but time flies when you’re attending trainings, keynotes, sessions and networking events. To make sure you get the best of everything at Jenkins World, we’ve put together a guide that will ensure you have the most productive and enjoyable experience.

    NOTE: devopsy.kinsta.cloud readers can get 20 percent off registration with the code JWDEVOPSCUST.

    Take the Time to Develop Your Skills

    The first two days of the conference will be full of workshops and training sessions. Regardless of skill level, there are trainings for everyone. Those just getting familiar with Jenkins can attend an “Introduction to Jenkins” training for free and learn how to easily create pipelines while putting in place best practices for continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD).

    Those a bit farther along their Jenkins journey can attend workshops such as “The Final Mile: Jenkins Pipeline and Patterns for Operations,” where attendees will review patterns of common problems and solutions specific to operations teams in a CD environment , as well as how to create Jenkins pipelines that address the needs of operations.

    Don’t Miss These Essential Sessions

    All attendees should make sure they make it to each of the keynotes, of course! Keynote speakers include Sacha Labourey, CEO of CloudBees; Kohsuke Kawaguchi, founder of the Jenkins project; and Jez Humble, CTO at DevOps Research and Assessment LLC.

    In addition to top-notch keynote speakers, there are a number of DevOps professionals you’ll want to hear from while at the show. Try to attend at least one of these sessions:

    Keep an Eye Out For …

    Make sure you listen in to find out who the winners are of the first annual Jenkins World Awards Program. There are two awards tracks: Jenkins Community Awards and CloudBees Innovation Awards. Each track has several categories including Jenkins Contributor Award, DevOps Automation Excellence Award and more. Winners will be announced Thursday, Aug. 31, at the show.

    You’ll also want to stop by the sponsor expo hall to check out dozens of great vendors. As with any good conference, there will be plenty of swag passed out. Exhibitors will include GitHub, BlazeMeter, Docker, JFrog, Fugue, Sonatype and others. Don’t miss out on taking a photo with the famous Jenkins butler at the CloudBees booth!

    Can’t Forget to Network

    With so many great sessions to attend, don’t forget to make time for networking events. It would be a waste to not take advantage of dedicated networking time to speak with experts and peers who have likely dealt with some of the challenges your organization may be facing. There will be several networking opportunities, including a reception Aug. 30 sponsored by CA BlazeMeter. Or if you’re looking for ways to stay active, attend a scheduled walk or yoga class.

    If you can check off all of the above activities, you’re bound to leave Jenkins World a better professional! Make a checklist at the start of the conference to ensure you hit all the events and sessions you’re most excited for.

    If you haven’t registered yet, there’s still time! Use the promotional code JWDEVOPSCUST for 20 percent off.

    About the Author / André Pino

    André brings more than 20 years of experience in high technology marketing and communications to his role as vice president of marketing at CloudBees. He has experience in several enterprise software markets including application development tools, middleware, manufacturing and supply chain, enterprise search and software quality and testing tools. André has particular expertise in working with the executive teams of enterprise software companies to create unique competitive positioning, build pipeline and establish sustainable market leadership. Prior to joining CloudBees, he served as principal analyst serving technology marketers at Forrester Research. He has also held a number of senior management positions in marketing and communications with companies such as Segue Software, Hewlett-Packard, Unisys Corp. and Bluestone Software. André holds a BS from Eastern University.

  • 5 Can’t-Miss DevOps Sessions at Jenkins World

    5 Can’t-Miss DevOps Sessions at Jenkins World

    In less than a month many Jenkins users and DevOps professionals will gather in San Francisco for Jenkins World, taking place Aug. 28-31. With more than 60 sessions to choose from, covering a wide range of topics, it can be difficult to narrow down your schedule. That’s why it’s important to go into the show with a goal in mind.

    For those of you specifically looking to hone your DevOps skills, here are five can’t-miss sessions that fall under the DevOps tracks.

    NOTE: devopsy.kinsta.cloud readers get 20 percent off their registration with the promotional code JWDEVOPSCUST.

    DevOps: Delivering on the promise of innovation, agility and velocity

    Forrester Analyst Rob Stroud will discuss recent Forrester research that confirmed organizations are leveraging agile development techniques, automated CI/CD pipelines, testing and release automation to deliver differentiated products. The interactive discussion will allow attendees to review their DevOps maturity versus that of the market. Stroud also will lead discussions of how DevOps is adding value within enterprises and how the adoption of containers and serverless computing will further drive DevOps adoption.

    DevOps Leadership Panel

    Attend this panel to hear from a variety of experts on topics such as software delivery challenges, business value realized from DevOps, building internal support and more. Panelists will include:

    • Rob Stroud, Principal Analyst, Forrester – moderator
    • Kolby Allen, AWS Architect, WatchGuard Technologies
    • Andrey Falko, Principal Engineer, Salesforce
    • George Swan, Director of Engineering Solutions, Autodesk
    • Stas Zvinyatskovsky, Engineering Leader and Architect, Accenture

    Mapping Your DevOps Journey with the DevOps Quadrant Maturity Model

    In this session, Brian Dawson, DevOps evangelist at CloudBees, will map the DevOps journey to the DevOps Quadrant Maturity Model. He’ll go through the characteristics of organizations within each quadrant and present strategies for moving to the next stage of DevOps maturity. The DevOps Maturity Model is a great way to assess your current state of DevOps.

    Banking on DevOps: How Leading Financial Services Organizations Are Driving the DevOps Transformation

    Hear from financial services executives about how their organizations are embracing DevOps practices to speed innovation and deliver more value to customers. The financial services industry faces specific security, governance and regulatory hurdles that can prove challenging when changing processes and technology. This session will be moderated by Andre Pino, VP of marketing at CloudBees. Speakers will include:

    • Brock Beatty, Director, Software Engineering, Capital One
    • Karthrik Loganathan, Director, Business Technology, ESQM, Discover
    • Stefan Simenon, Head of IT Tooling & Software Development, ABN AMRO Bank N.V.
    • Moied Wahid, Director, Software Development, PayPal

    Leading a DevOps Transformation

    In this session, Jez Humble, CTO at DevOps Research & Assessment LLC (and also a Jenkins World keynote speaker), will discuss how implementing DevOps is more than just implementing tools. He’ll walk through how a DevOps transformation requires a different way of thinking about everything from budgeting to management to compliance. He’ll also break down exactly what DevOps is and isn’t.

    Don’t miss out on the hundreds of DevOps leaders and trailblazers to learn from at Jenkins World. You can view the full Jenkins World agenda to see what other sessions can help boost your DevOps skills!

    If you haven’t registered yet, make sure you to do so today with the promotional code JWDEVOPSCUST.

    — Alan Shimel

  • Jenkins World Preview: Q&A with Jez Humble

    Jenkins World Preview: Q&A with Jez Humble

    As we approach Jenkins World, scheduled for later this month in San Francisco, we sat down with Jez Humble, author of “Continuous Delivery” and one of the best-known names in DevOps. Jez will be keynoting this year’s event, along with CloudBees CEO and founder Sacha Labourey. Here’s what he had to say.

    Alan Shimel: What are you most excited for at Jenkins World?

    Humble: This is my first Jenkins World! I’m most excited to meet the community and find out what people care about, what problems they’re solving, what obstacles they’re facing, and what’s making them excited or sad. I’ve spent over a decade doing and teaching continuous integration and working on tools, so I’m always looking to validate and challenge my views.

    Shimel: What do you plan to cover in your keynote?

    Humble: I’ll be talking about DevOps, and how it’s transforming the world of software and the businesses it powers. I’ve been working on a research project into DevOps for the last few years so there will be some hard data. I’ll also be covering the principles and practices, as well as the obstacles that teams commonly face implementing them, and how to overcome them.

    Shimel: What do you hope attendees take away from your talk?

    Humble: First, I want folks to understand that this transformation is real, not just hype. High performers achieve higher levels of throughput, stability, and quality, and lower costs. Second, it’s hard. We’ve been talking about continuous integration for nearly twenty years now—it’s one of the basic agile engineering practices—and still the majority of people who think they’re doing it actually aren’t. But my other message is that whatever kind of organization you’re in, whatever your technology stack, you can apply these principles today. The essence of high performance is to work on getting better every day as part of your daily work, and that’s something all of us can—and should—commit to.

    Shimel: What are the major DevOps trends you’ve seen this year?

    Humble: I’ve not seen anything brand new jump on the scene this year. I think that’s a good thing. We’ve had so many transformational new technologies in the last few years from containers and serverless to new tools that I think we were in danger of drowning under shiny objects and hype. I think what I’ve seen in the last year is a better understanding of the contexts in which these tools and technologies can be effectively applied.

    Overall, the last few years has been pretty exciting as we’ve seen devops and continuous delivery be applied in every domain from government (I spent most of last year working at 18F in the U.S. Federal Government helping to implement a DevOps, cloud-first approach to software delivery there) to mainframes in  financial services to firmware. One of the common objections to devops is the “won’t work here” attitude, and we’ve comprehensively demolished that. 

    Shimel: How do you expect DevOps to change in the next five years? 

    Humble: I’m hopeful that many of the core practices such as infrastructure-as-code, continuous delivery, disposable/immutable infrastructure and blameless post-mortems will become business-as-usual in organizations of all types and sizes. However the field is still moving pretty fast, so I think we’ll continue to see plenty of innovation both in terms of the practices, their implementation, and the tools. 

    Shimel: What are the three most important things DevOps professionals need to focus on to achieve DevOps success?

    Humble:

    1. Know what success looks like in measurable terms. What are the organization-level goals we’re all working towards, and when do we want to have achieved them? Leaders should be setting clear, prioritized, measurable goals—for example, “Release every two weeks without anybody working outside normal business hours”—and then giving teams the resources and support they need to achieve them.
    2. Most of your problems are going to be cultural. People like to focus on tools, and tools are definitely important, but that’s not normally where the failure modes are. I recently said my #1 devops advice was to buy lunch for and actively listen to someone in the role you complain about most in your org, whether that’s the auditors, the testers, or the DBAs. Find them and work out something you can do to make their life a bit better and then do it.
    3. You’re never done: keep going! As I said, high performers are always working to get better. Devops and continuous delivery are implemented through working to get a little bit better every day. Most of the big lessons I learned in my career I learned not by working on exciting new technologies but by doing unglamorous grunt work using tools like CVS and bash. Find out what your team’s biggest obstacle is right now and do something to improve. Then find the next obstacle! Rinse and repeat.

    — Alan Shimel

  • Jenkins World: Q&A with CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey

    Jenkins World: Q&A with CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey

     The Jenkins Community and DevOps professionals around the world are excited for Jenkins World, coming up in just a month, Aug. 28-31 in San Francisco. CloudBees, the hub of enterprise Jenkins and DevOps, is the lead organizer and premier sponsor of the event. We sat down with CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey to discuss everything Jenkins World.

    NOTE: If you haven’t registered yet, there is still time! devopsy.kinsta.cloud readers can register now with the code JWDEVOPSCUST and get 20 percent off.

    Q: How has Jenkins World evolved since its inception?

    A: It’s been quite the journey since the beginning of Jenkins World. The very first Jenkins World was back in 2011. We had 200 people attending and we were extremely proud of that. The Jenkins project was still new, as it had just changed its name in 2011, so we were excited to see the community already coming together. Fast forward to 2017 and we’re expecting about 2,000 attendees at this year’s event. We’ve grown 10x since the first show and even from last year to this year we’re expecting almost 50 percent more attendees. It’s been great watching the conference mature and grow over the years. 2017 will be our best show yet!

    Q: What’s new at Jenkins World this year?

    A: This year we’re expanding everything, covering a wide range of topics including DevOps culture, process design, automated testing, performance measurement, security, leadership and more. We’ve added a welcome reception and evening event in the expo hall so attendees have more opportunities to network and learn from each other.

    Additionally, we’ll be kicking off the first-ever annual Jenkins World Awards. These awards recognize the achievements of CD innovators and Jenkins contributors from around the world. There are two award tracks: Jenkins Community Awards and CloudBees Innovation Awards. Winners in each track will be featured at Jenkins World.

    Q: What can attendees expect from the keynotes?

    A: We have a great lineup of keynotes this year, including myself! My keynote will be a state of the union that looks at what’s happened in the last year, what worked, what didn’t work and what we’ve learned from it. Stemming from that I’ll also offer a vision for the future. This will be actionable, and practical—something we can truly act on. I’m excited to say that there will be some significant announcements throughout the week as well.

    Kohsuke Kawaguchi will also be keynoting. His keynote is always excellent. He’ll offer a state of the union from the Jenkins community angle. He’ll go over the evolution of the Jenkins project and run through the latest numbers. It’s such a pleasure to watch him on stage each year; his talks are always exciting.

    We’re also thrilled that Jez Humble will be keynoting this year. He literally wrote the book on DevOps, so if you’re looking to learn about DevOps, he’s the man you want to hear. He’ll be discussing the DevOps market, challenges, opportunities, the evolving requirements and needs of DevOps professionals and more.

    Q: What advice do you have for first-time attendees?

    A: My advice is: Take advantage of the trainings, workshops and certification opportunities. Last year, workshops and training were a huge success, so we’re offering even more this year. It’s a great way to further your career. It’s very hands-on and provides an opportunity to show tangible results of how the conference helps you improve your skills and ultimately helps your career.

    Also, make sure to network with fellow professionals. It’s the perfect time to find out how others are approaching their projects, what challenges they faced and how they’ve overcome them. It’s such a great community of professionals to learn from.

    Q: Are there any sessions you recommend?

    A: I’d certainly recommend checking out some of the specialized vertical sessions. For example, we’ll have a number of sessions that focus on the financial services industry with speakers from Capital One, PayPal and more.

    We’ll also have some great DevSecOps presentations. It’s a very hot topic and is increasingly important in DevOps. I’d highly recommend attendees get to at least one of these sessions.

    Finally, there will be several sessions focused on testing—which often adds the most friction to delivery pipelines. These sessions will prove really helpful for attendees looking to enhance their testing processes.

    There you have it! This year’s show is bound to be bigger and better than ever before. Register now with your 20 percent off code: JWDEVOPSCUST.

    — Alan Shimel

  • Why Your Manager Will Want to Send You to Jenkins World 2017

    Why Your Manager Will Want to Send You to Jenkins World 2017

    Jenkins World 2017 is right around the corner. The conference will be held in San Francisco Aug. 28-31 and will be the biggest event of the year for Jenkins users, with approximately 2,000 people expected to be in attendance! You will not want to miss out on this event, full of learning and networking opportunities.

    Need some help convincing your manager why you should attend? No problem—we have laid out all the reasons why attending would be beneficial to you and your company. Once you have convinced your manager to attend, don’t forget to register today! (As a media sponsor for Jenkins World, we are providing a special offer for our readers. Register with this promotional code and get 20 percent off your registration: JWDEVOPSCUST.

    Educational Value

    Jenkins World will be offering more than 60 educational sessions given by real Jenkins experts—a chance to learn from the most experienced users. Did we mention that you can also receive a free Jenkins exam with the purchase of a full conference registration? Imagine the benefits for both your résumé and team.

    At the conference, you’ll be able to take advantage of great training sessions to better enhance your Jenkins capabilities. The training sessions include Jenkins Certification Training, Introduction to Jenkins, DevOps Leader Certification Training and DevOps Test Engineering Certification Training. We recommend highlighting to your manager what sessions you will want to attend in advance. Check out the full agenda here.

    Jenkins World is offering keynotes from many industry leaders. Be sure to emphasize to your manager the importance of hearing from the very best in the Jenkins community, live on stage and in the breakout sessions. From Jenkins founder Kohsuke Kawaguchi to CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey and featured speaker Jez Humble, your manager will greatly appreciate the knowledge you bring back to the office from listening to such experienced industry experts.

    Networking Opportunities 

    The Jenkins World conference will provide numerous networking opportunities. Learn what similar problems and challenges other organizations are facing in the industry. Make it known to your manager that you will be exposed to people like you, with like business needs and challenges, that you will be able to connect with.

    Prove ROI

    When convincing your manager to let you attend, it is first important to make them aware of the potential ROI of this opportunity. Detail exactly your expenses including airfare, hotels and meals. This will better help your manager understand the exact cost to send you to Jenkins World. Make sure you also present how this knowledge will help push you and your team forward, ultimately propelling your entire organization forward. The ROI will be evident – make that clear! (And the ROI just got better, because devopsy.kinsta.cloud readers can use this discount code and get 20 percent off: JWDEVOPSCUST.)

    We hope this provides enough information to help you convince your manager to let you attend! We have also created an email template to use when sending all this over to your manager for review. Once you have successfully convinced your boss, go register!

    — Alan Shimel

  • Top 5 Reasons to Attend Jenkins World

    Top 5 Reasons to Attend Jenkins World

    The countdown is on! Jenkins World 2017 is coming to downtown San Francisco, Aug. 28-31, for the annual opportunity to learn about all things Jenkins, DevOps and continuous delivery. This year’s event will be held at the Marriott Marquis and will bring together approximately 2,000 Jenkins users, comprised of Jenkins experts, IT executives, DevOps practitioners and partners from all over the world. The event is led and sponsored by CloudBees, the hub of enterprise Jenkins and DevOps, and will offer attendees opportunities to learn, explore and network, while shaping the future of Jenkins.

    As a special offer to devopsy.kinsta.cloud readers, we are offering a discounted registration. Use the promotional code JWDEVOPSCUST during your Jenkins World registration and get 20 percent off!

    Need more convincing? Below are five reasons to attend this year’s Jenkins World:

    • Hear keynotes from industry leaders: Kohsuke Kawaguchi, founder of the Jenkins project, kicks off the conference with the opening keynote this year. Other keynotes you won’t want to miss include Sacha Labourey, CEO of CloudBees and Jez Humble, CTO at DevOps Research and Assessment LLC and co-author of “The DevOps Handbook,” “Lean Enterprise” and “Continuous Delivery.” Kohsuke will provide perspective on the dramatic milestones reached in the community this year, while Sacha will provide perspective on how CloudBees and DevOps are transforming industries. Jez will discuss DevOps principles and practices, how to overcome typical obstacles and the results companies are realizing from DevOps initiatives.
    • Attend optional training and workshop sessions: Leave Jenkins World a Jenkins master by getting certified and/or learning the fundamentals of Jenkins by attending trainings for the Certified Jenkins Engineer (CJE) exam, and the Certified CloudBees Jenkins Platform Engineer (CJPE) exam. There are several other training opportunities and a wide range of workshops addressing topics such as pipeline automation, Docker, Blue Ocean and more. Maximize the learning opportunities through the options offered early in the week, then stay for the conference and get exposure to another 60+ conference sessions.
    • Brush shoulders with the Jenkins stars: Get access to some of the biggest Jenkins experts in the world, attend their sessions and network with them. A sampling of sessions from the Jenkins World agenda includes:
      • DevOps Leadership Panel from Dirk Luedtke, SAP; Kolby Allen, WatchGuard; Moied Wahid, PayPal; Stas Zvinyatskovsky, Accenture
      • The Ten Commandments of Continuous Delivery from Viktor Farcic, senior consultant at CloudBees
      • How We Do DevOps at Rosetta Stone from Kevin Burnett, DevOps lead at Rosetta Stone
      • Azure DevOps Open Source Integrations from Arun Chandrasekhar, senior program manager at Microsoft
      • You also won’t want to miss the ever-popular Ask the Experts booth, where Jenkins experts from around the globe address your specific issues and questions on the spot. You’ll return from the conference armed with a solution to that vexing issue you have been trying to solve!
    • Visit a variety of vendors: At the expanded Sponsor Expo you can check out a range of technologies that integrate with Jenkins as well as DevOps services provided by experts. Check out the booth swag and make sure to check out the news coming from the vendors.
    • Meet the Butler and snap a selfie: You may have seen the Butler on his wild social media adventures recently, but at Jenkins World you’ll have the chance to meet him in person. Don’t forget to snap a pic with him at the social media booth and share with your friends. There will also be Flat Jenkins floating around beforehand—stay tuned to social media (specifically #JenkinsWorld on Twitter) to see where he lands before Jenkins World!

    All of this and so much more awaits you at Jenkins World. Go register now! Use this code JWDEVOPSCUST and get 20 percent off your conference registration.

    See you soon!

    About the Author / André Pino

    André brings more than 20 years of experience in high technology marketing and communications to his role as vice president of marketing at CloudBees. He has experience in several enterprise software markets including application development tools, middleware, manufacturing and supply chain, enterprise search and software quality and testing tools. André has particular expertise in working with the executive teams of enterprise software companies to create unique competitive positioning, build pipeline and establish sustainable market leadership. Prior to joining CloudBees, he served as principal analyst serving technology marketers at Forrester Research. He has also held a number of senior management positions in marketing and communications with companies such as Segue Software, Hewlett-Packard, Unisys Corp. and Bluestone Software. André holds a BS from Eastern University.