The time has come to consolidate the DevOps toolchain, says GitLab

GitLab imposes its credentials as a one-stop platform for DevOps with its latest major version.

In an interview with Computer At last week’s KubeCon event, Kenny Johnston, senior director of product management, repeated the phrase “the only DevOps platform” more than once. It is no coincidence that this label is also prominent on the GitLab website and in marketing materials from April and is an indication that the company believes that the time has come to consolidate the DevOps toolkit.

“Statistics show that most organizations plan to make DevOps, but they are not mature. And we keep finding that this maturity is hampered by too many tools, too many adhesives, and often it’s old adhesives that supported a model other than DevOps, “Johnston said.

Not that customers usually want to go all-in right away. They typically adopt GitLab for its source code management (SCM) and continuous integration (CI) capabilities, he said, adding other features as they continue their DevOps journey, including, typically, package and problem management, operations and security tools .

Consolidation of the DevOps tool chain has been expected for some time, especially with large cloud platforms offering their own solutions – integrated to a greater or lesser extent – but this is slow as it is a fast moving area where choice the developers are all important.

GitLab says that is changing, citing a 2021 Bain study that says about 60 percent of companies say they plan to consolidate on DevOps platforms over the next three years.

However, recent Computer delta A survey of IT leaders in the UK found little urgency to consolidate, weighing the convenience of having everything in one place versus being able to adopt the best of the breed wherever they want (although many thought they would eventually enter the UK). -in from the cloud service provider offering).

Source code management (SCM) was one of the areas where consolidation was definitely considered profitable, with 86% saying it was best to stick to one SCM platform, but in other areas the preferences were less clear. Only a third were willing to consolidate their code protection tools, for example, most were unsure. However, it is a sure bet that with the introduction of DevOps, standardization will occur.

The latest major version of GitLab, 15.0, released today, includes all-level container scanning, advanced search, and a WYSIWYG editor. With announcements for more to come (a new version of points comes out on 22^nd every month with planned functions marked in advance), in the field of product analysis and experimentation. New DevSecOps features are also coming; focus on software supply chain security, including upcoming Software Specification (SBOM) support; improved compliance management; scanning and auditing; and Agile workflow planning and automation features.

This month, the company also made open source its download-based deployment feature, making available what used to be GitOps’ enterprise-wide feature for free users. This is a Kubernetes-only feature that automates code implementation. An agent installed in a Kubernetes cluster retrieves changes from branches when there is a deviation from the desired configuration, as stated in the manifest.

“You don’t get the configuration change you get with the push-based model, where you can have different versions,” Johnston explained. “It makes for a better development experience and is an important security paradigm.”

While acknowledging that other vendors, not least Microsoft’s GitHub and Atlassian, are following in the footsteps of the DevOps platform, Johnstone insisted that they were following the guidance established by GitLab. It is important to listen to DevOps teams and provide them with tools to make their lives easier, especially in terms of operations and security, he added.

“DevSecOps is really hard to do if your developers need to switch to another tool. They will probably just ignore it. But with integrated security, with every commitment you get feedback on the implications of the code you’ve written. One advantage of this one approach on the DevOps platform is that you don’t have to sacrifice speed security. “