Source: devops.com. Original coverage published October 2018.
Overview: India’s Largest DevOps Conference
DevOps India Summit 2018 — billed as India’s largest DevOps-focused conference — concluded on September 1, 2018, at the Marriott Hotel, Whitefield, Bengaluru. A pre-event workshop day on August 31 preceded the main summit. More than 500 professionals attended, ranging from corporate leaders to mid-level managers drawn from organizations across the country.
The summit was conceived as a practitioner-led platform: a place where DevOps engineers and leaders in India could hear experienced practitioners share real-world transformation journeys and engage directly with internationally recognized experts. Attendees could also submit talks through a formal call-for-papers process, giving the wider community a voice in the agenda.
Organizers and Partners
The event was organized by Xellentro in partnership with a broad ecosystem of sponsors and co-organizers, including:
- DevOps Institute
- Crevise Technology
- Confinity Consulting
- GitLab
- Datamato
- Sumo Logic
- Zoomcar
- MongoDB
- TechGig
- The Entrepreneur
- PEOPLECERT
The diversity of partners reflected the summit’s ambition to cover the full DevOps toolchain and organizational transformation spectrum — from CI/CD pipelines and cloud-native infrastructure to database operations and security.
Sessions and Speakers
The summit featured 30 full sessions and six lightning talks, delivered by speakers from the United States, France, Brazil, and India. The agenda was deliberately balanced, covering both strategic and technical dimensions of DevOps transformation.
Keynote and Featured Talks
- John Willis (President, DevOps and Digital Practices, SJ Technologies) — Keynote on DevSecOps
- Marc Hornbeek — Continuous Delivery Architecture
- Aymen El Amri — Cloud Native practices and adoption
- Amanda Mattos — Personal DevOps transformation journey across multiple organizations
Industry and Practice Sessions
- Container-based CI Solutions — Archana Joshi, Director, Cognizant Technology Solutions
- DevOps Assessment Framework — Dr. Shome, TCS
- High-Speed DevOps — Zoomcar
- Importance and Use of Databases in DevOps — MongoDB
- Gaming in DevOps — Wipro
- Scaling DevOps — Padma
- DevOps in Automotive Engineering — KPIT
A panel discussion featuring ten speakers addressed a wide range of topics, including DevSecOps integration and — notably — the case for including DevOps principles in university curricula, a subject of growing relevance as engineering colleges across India modernize their software engineering programs.
Pre-Event Workshops
The August 31 pre-event day offered two distinct hands-on learning experiences:
- Architecting Continuous Delivery — A full workshop by Marc Hornbeek, drawing a large audience and receiving strong positive feedback from attendees.
- G2G3 DevOps Simulation — Facilitated by Niladri Choudhuri, this immersive simulation introduced participants to core DevOps principles through experiential learning. The simulation format is designed to help teams viscerally understand the difference between siloed and collaborative delivery practices, making it a practical starting point for organizations beginning a DevOps transformation.
GitLab representatives also demonstrated their product suite during the event.
Speaker Perspectives
“It was a great feeling to attend this summit, as we get to meet new people who have been in this industry for a while. I have come across people who are smart, aggressive learners and are eager to know more — they put up questions that were never asked before, and it took me time to navigate to an answer.”
— John Willis, President, DevOps and Digital Practices, SJ Technologies
Marc Hornbeek noted that the event had the feel of the DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES), but at a more intimate scale — one where speakers could mingle directly with delegates and engage in informal knowledge-sharing that larger conferences often make difficult.
Awards and Recognition
Several awards were distributed across the event:
- The most active Twitter participant during the event received an Amazon voucher, awarded by Xellentro.
- PEOPLECERT gave five attendees free examination vouchers for certifications delivered through Xellentro.
- DevOps Institute awarded a prize to the highest scorer in its DevOps Practitioner certification program conducted through Xellentro.
Looking Ahead: A Community for Indian DevOps Practitioners
Closing the event, Niladri Choudhuri — the organizer who conceptualized the summit — reflected on its significance:
“It is very encouraging to see people coming together and working as a team to promote the real essence of DevOps. This is the first ever DevOps event in India at such a large scale with prime focus on core content and the quality of speakers who bring value to organisations. This is a start to more such future initiatives, and I thank everyone for their support.”
— Niladri Choudhuri, Founder, Xellentro
Following the summit, Xellentro announced plans to build a standing community of DevOps practitioners in India — a platform for ongoing peer learning, experience sharing, and collaboration beyond the annual conference format.
Why This Summit Matters for DevOps in India
The Indian technology sector represents one of the world’s largest concentrations of software engineering talent, yet structured DevOps adoption — particularly the cultural and organizational dimensions — has lagged behind tooling adoption in many enterprises. Events like DevOps India Summit serve a specific and important role: creating a neutral space where practitioners can benchmark their own transformation efforts against peers, learn from international leaders, and build the professional networks needed to sustain change inside organizations.
The breadth of the 2018 agenda — from automotive engineering to gaming, from database DevOps to CI pipeline design — reflects the reality that DevOps is no longer confined to pure software product companies. It is increasingly a requirement for any organization that depends on software to deliver business outcomes.