The Continuous Delivery Map is designed to help untangle the DevOps and continuous delivery ecosystems. Why? Because toolchain sprawl and overlapping technology is becoming a huge obstacle for both growing and large-scale organizations. Everyone is under increasing pressure to "Build that App." We hope this map helps navigate you to success!
The exponential growth in technologies being used within DevOps environments is a measure of the focus enterprises are placing on this new way of working. Whether it be experimental or mainstream development teams, or even technologies adopted through acquisition, the end result is a growing number of tools. It's an issue highlighted by a recent survey from DevOps.com* which found:
- 53% of development teams don't have a standardized toolset
- 40% of respondents said they are currently using between five to ten solutions
- 53% of enterprise-scale organizations are using at least 20 different tools
There is no denying the large number of tools that now go into the process of creating applications. Most teams are struggling to keep up-to-date with what tools are available, what they all do and understand how they all fit together.
Introducing the Continuous Delivery Map?
The Continuous Delivery Map is designed to help you make sense of all the different tools available, providing you with a simple visual guide of where they sit in the overall DevOps landscape. Each line represents a different technology category and includes products that are available within that category.
We've based the map on a simple metro system, akin to the London Underground, with each line representing a specific category. You can click on any 'stop' and learn more about the tool, in what context it can be used and its capabilities. It also offers insight into where the different tools can integrate with one another.
The map also highlights the fact that, as with a distribution network, a central hub exists, from which the various tools can be orchestrated - much like an assembly line. This hub enables processes which have been planned, structured and defined to be repeated. The central hub tools will normally have integrations to communicate with other products on the map, often providing a simple push button deployment.
What Does This Mean for the Modern Software Factory?
The map helps demystify the tangled web of tools and demonstrates how you can construct your modern software factory with a single central hub. Regardless of how many tools you have amassed, you can easily picture how they relate to one another, as well as find out about their specific purposes by clicking on the stop; each one representing your app's journey to completion.
I hope you find the Continuous Delivery Map helpful. It will continue to evolve over time with new entrants and further refinements. I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on ways you think we can improve it in the comments below.
*In 2016, Automic partnered with DevOps.com on a global survey of over 225 IT and Business professionals in order to examine the selection, adoption, and impact of developer tools within their organizations. Key findings indicated steady growth of the tool stack, how unstable and unrealistic vendor lock-in had become and the importance of managing a coherent deployment pipeline, especially as many organizations were adopting and implementing DevOps focused initiatives.
