As Agile software development and DevOps adoption in the enterprise continues to grow, more vendors are jumping into the ring with new platforms.
There has been a flurry of activity in the Agile and DevOps world of late, with vendors providing new software, services and support for developers.
DevOps emphasizes cooperation between developers and IT operations. The goal of DevOps is to change and improve the relationship between software developers and operations by advocating better communication and collaboration between the two business units.
With that goal in mind, Shippable, a continuous deployment software provider, recently launched a new version of its platform that helps streamline the process of shipping software. New features in the latest version of Shippable include release management, multi-cloud support, a declarative pipeline language and a unified view across all application pipelines.
The goal of Agile environments is to get developers to move their applications from source code to production as quickly and painlessly as possible. This means breaking down silos and integrating core components for more simplified development using a contiguous pipeline approach. Shippable’s new features help software-powered organizations further streamline the process of shipping software and accelerating innovation.
The platform enables developers to visualize the flow of their software from code to production in a unified view across applications. This helps identify bottlenecks so developers or operations can address them as needed.
The platform integrates with the major tooling environments and cloud infrastructures, as well as container technology. Developer workspace provider Codenvy said DevOps is implemented through a continuous delivery software pipeline. And continuous delivery encompasses continuous development, integration and deployment. Meanwhile, containers are helping redefine DevOps. For instance, Shippable is providing automated DevOps with Docker.
Shippable integrates with Docker, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Container Service, Google Kubernetes, Microsoft Azure Container Service, Joyent Triton and Apache Mesos DC/OS.
“With [Shippable’s] new release, customers can leverage our declarative language, easily compose fungible pipelines and start the process of rapid innovation in a matter of hours,” Avi Cavale, co-founder and CEO at Shippable, in a statement.
Initially, the company added new features mainly for its own developers internally, but as the platform and customer base grew, they began to support external developers, Cavale said.
“We run over 3 million deployment workflows a year for our customers, and I think that by itself speaks for the battle readiness, resilience and scale of the platform,” he said.
Meanwhile, putting DevOps into practice, Unisys earlier this month snagged a $232 million contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Unisys will employ an AWS-based DevOps environment to build new projects and integrate them into the agency’s cloud-based infrastructure.
Unisys has committed to apply Agile development methodologies to facilitate the delivery of software for its application modernization and maintenance efforts under the contract, the company said.
DevOps is a new core competency for Unisys. In July, the company won a $12.6 million contract with the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Public Buildings Service (PBS). Under the contract, Unisys will use a DevOps software development model to help the agency focus on smaller software releases that are deployed more rapidly and incrementally.
“Unisys will bring the technical and management expertise that PBS needs to manage its change to a DevOps model and to make it work,” Casey Coleman, group vice president for civilian agencies at Unisys Federal, said in a statement. “Our DevOps experience with other government agencies as well as commercial clients can help PBS to more collaboratively and efficiently develop and deploy the systems needed to manage the U.S. federal government’s properties and facilities.”
A Unisys spokesman told eWEEK the company has DevOps experience with federal clients, such as the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Homeland Security.
For these and other clients, Unisys provides a host of DevOps consulting services that include assessment, strategy advisory services and implementation management and support service to help them maximize the efficiency of their software releases. The company also offers a custom set of DevOps managed services to meet customers’ individualized needs.
