CloudBees’ DevOps World 2020 Points the Way to Accelerated Resiliency – InApps Technology 2022

CloudBees sponsored this post

Resiliency is certainly a desired trait for 2020. For CloudBees’ founder Sacha Labourey, resiliency is all a mix of strength, tenacity, discipline, and steadiness of hand. But DevOps is about moving fast. With that in mind, this year’s CloudBees’ DevOps World (formerly Jenkins World) is about supporting teams in pursuing “accelerated resiliency” — that tenacity at speed.

In a call leading up to the e-conference, Labourey told InApps Technology that organizations are used to operating in a specific way. They are used to controlling things in what he refers to “ControlOps,” but then DevOps and agile product teams want to move at a much faster pace.

“You get speed but you lose control and you don’t really know what’s happening in your organization and especially now in these COVID times you can’t really raise your hand for what you do,” Labourey said.

He says that DevOps is perceived as being about winning competitively — but even before that, it’s about resiliency.

“If you truly want to initiate DevOps, you should think about reaching a state of resiliency,” Labourey continued.

There have been a lot of lessons this year so far. And when we all suddenly went remote-first earlier this year, a big one was that so much was relying on one system or person. Organizations big and small were taken down by a single point of failure going offline or getting the virus.

“At a time in our lives when stress is at an all-time high, the last thing that anyone needs is the added pressure of owning all of the data and knowing all of the knowledge needed to see a business functioning at peak performance.” — @SachaLabourey #DevOpsWorld

— Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) September 22, 2020

With this in mind, the CloudBees team introduced, a la Lauryn Hill’s “Everything Is Everything,” their own “Three Everythings” at the conference:

1. Everything automated.
2. Everything connected.
3. Everything resilient.

“The time to move is now. The time to act is now. It is our responsibility to make the best use of this time and its teachings. If we don’t do that, then, in a way we have failed honor the sacrifices made during this time of disconnection and loss.” — @SachaLabourey

— Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) September 22, 2020

CloudBees’ senior vice president Shawn Ahmed broke down the how, arguing that resiliency at speed is about baking security right in. It’s about finding that perfect balance between flexibility and automation to created flexible automation. Which all comes down to communication across whole value streams, from Dev to Ops to shared services.

️Everything Automated:

☑️ eliminates SPoF + silos between tools, hardware, processes, people
☑️ codifies architecture & processes across #SDLC
☑️ converts cross-org knowledge into formal rules
… no team member or toolset can be a critical lynchpin#CICD pic.twitter.com/uKGderTpjC

— Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) September 22, 2020

This is impossible with disconnected tools and processes. You can’t know all the raw data from across our distributed teams, hybrid/multicloud, hardware and data. The value is in the key, actionable insights that allow teams to act on and improve.

Focus beats distributed chaos.

— Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) September 22, 2020

️ Everything Resilient
Codification + #Automation = #Security + Integrity

“We’re moving towards a state where changes large & small can be safely delivered with any frequency desired, allowing devs to make changes to their applications without introducing configuration drift.”

— Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) September 22, 2020

“In this world of full of automation, those virtual robots that follow the CI/CD process you’ve defined as code are the only ones that can push assets in production with all the necessary security gates and policies built right in. No configuration change will ever happen just for that one release. It’s either something you bake in or it’s just for that one release. All production assets become versioned and reproducible via automated process, so no change under the radar. Everything is on the table. Fully auditable and traceable.” — Shawn Ahmed, CloudBees

Finally, in this keynote, CloudBees area vice president Buffi Gresh argued that this commitment to everything automated, connected and resilient evens the playing field. It’s accessible to the largest enterprises and the smallest startup teams.

“Much like California in the 1950s, every company has an equal chance to claim their market share. Whether you’re an enterprise of 5,000 or you’re five developers in a garage, the differentiator will be the connection to your customer: Your software. How fast can you deliver new capabilities? How fast can you shift to the changing needs of your customer?” Gresh said.

No matter the size of your organization, the idea of “Everything as Code” acts as a force multiplier, she said. But that it’s not easy to achieve.

“Pipelines transform from unique little processes to robust clones that can pause, resume and even multiply — and that is powerful.” 2/2

— @BuffiGresh challenges you to architect your codified elements as the key components of your #scalability

— Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) September 22, 2020

Everything Connected = end-to-end #automation in value stream

“We all think as Scrum these days. We all fall back to: ‘Just do it’.”

But how then can we identify the many points of failure across intricate systems? Plan for those unexpected extremes? pic.twitter.com/Bzzirivw9h

— Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) September 22, 2020

Gresh says there are three different ways to architect your value stream, each with varying appeal:

1. A single solution or “DevOps in a Box,” which she called cheap wine — “mediocre, opinionated, and not flexible enough to service complex enterprise development.”
2. Daisy-Chain Toolsets, which “supports best of breed but it does not support complete end-to-end visibility across your entire toolchain. Basically what you’re doing is you’re taking these beautiful components and you’re connecting them together with duct tape and bubblegum.”
3. The Software Delivery Platform “allows you to connect best-of-breed solutions across your entire complex and diverse tool-scape. This approach works for small agile teams but it also enables you to scale to the enterprise.”

#Security = core tenant of #Resiliency… but what does it actually mean to be secure? secure in every part of the toolchain?

☑️ secure in development
☑️ secure in delivery
☑️ secure in production

— Jennifer Riggins (@jkriggins) September 22, 2020

To learn more about the CloudBees’ flavor of software delivery management, read: “CloudBees Offers SalesForce-Like Features for Software Delivery Management.”