Originally published in SD Times (sdtimes.com), the 2019 DevOps Showcase highlighted vendors across the full DevOps toolchain — from planning and source control to continuous integration, testing, release automation, and observability. Below is a summary of each featured vendor and what they brought to the DevOps ecosystem as of mid-2019.
CI/CD and Pipeline Automation
CircleCI
CircleCI offered a continuous integration and continuous delivery platform designed to help software teams work faster and more confidently. Its core value proposition centered on shortening feedback loops, enabling teams to iterate and ship frequently without introducing regressions. By handling CI/CD infrastructure, CircleCI aimed to let engineering teams focus on building products rather than managing pipelines.
Atlassian
Atlassian offered both cloud and on-premises continuous delivery solutions. Bamboo served as the on-premises option, integrating automated builds, tests, and releases into a single workflow with strong support for the delivery phase of CD. For cloud-native teams, Bitbucket Pipelines provided a modern CD service built directly into the Bitbucket Cloud version control system.
CloudBees
CloudBees positioned itself as the hub of enterprise Jenkins and DevOps. Building on Jenkins — then the most widely adopted open-source CD platform — CloudBees added enterprise-grade security, scalability, manageability, and support. The company also offered CloudBees DevOptics, providing visibility and insights into software delivery pipelines.
JetBrains (TeamCity)
TeamCity is JetBrains’ CI/CD server, emphasizing fast setup and real-time build results. It integrated with major development frameworks, version-control systems, issue trackers, IDEs, and cloud services out of the box.
Microsoft Azure DevOps
Microsoft’s Azure DevOps suite brought together a family of services for end-to-end software delivery:
- Azure Pipelines — CI/CD automation
- Azure Boards — planning and work tracking
- Azure Artifacts — package creation, hosting, and sharing
- Azure Repos — version control and collaboration
- Azure Test Plans — test management and execution
GitLab
GitLab aimed to address the entire DevOps lifecycle under a single platform through what it called Concurrent DevOps — a model that freed organizations from fragmented toolchains and enabled better visibility, earlier contribution, and asynchronous collaboration across teams.
Infrastructure and Configuration Automation
Chef
Chef Automate provided a continuous automation platform for building, deploying, and managing infrastructure and applications collaboratively. It integrated with three open-source projects:
- Chef — infrastructure automation
- Habitat — application automation
- InSpec — compliance automation
Puppet
Puppet provided an IT automation platform for delivering and operating modern software at scale. The platform gave organizations visibility into their software estate and the automation needed to drive changes with confidence. Puppet cited adoption by more than 75% of the Fortune 100 for DevOps, cloud migration, security, and compliance use cases.
Artifact Management and Distribution
JFrog
JFrog’s portfolio in 2019 comprised four products covering the full artifact lifecycle:
- JFrog Artifactory — Universal Artifact Repository
- JFrog Bintray — Universal Distribution Platform
- JFrog Mission Control — Universal DevOps Flow Management
- JFrog Xray — Universal Component Analyzer for security and compliance scanning
All products were available as open-source, on-premises, and SaaS cloud solutions.
Release Automation and Value Stream Management
XebiaLabs
XebiaLabs developed enterprise-scale continuous delivery and DevOps software focused on providing visibility, automation, and control for large-scale software releases. The company targeted organizations that needed to accelerate release frequency while reducing delivery risk.
CollabNet VersionOne
CollabNet VersionOne’s Continuum product brought automation to DevOps pipelines through performance management, value stream orchestration, release automation, and compliance and audit capabilities. It integrated with popular DevOps tools including Jenkins, AWS, Chef, Selenium, Subversion, Jira, and Docker.
Tasktop
Tasktop addressed the challenge of fragmented toolchains through its model-based integration approach. Its Value Stream Integration technology automated the flow of project-critical information across dozens of tools, hundreds of projects, and thousands of practitioners — providing visibility and traceability across the entire software delivery value stream.
OpenMake
OpenMake offered two complementary products: DeployHub Pro for agentless software release automation and Meister for build automation that accelerated binary compilation to match Agile iteration cycles.
Broadcom
Broadcom’s DevOps portfolio spanned the complete toolchain from planning to performance monitoring, covering mobile to mainframe environments. Notable offerings included the BlazeMeter Continuous Testing Platform, the Automic Intelligent Pipeline, and mainframe DevOps capabilities built around the open-source Zowe framework.
Database DevOps
Redgate
Redgate’s SQL Toolbelt integrated database development into DevOps software delivery pipelines, fitting into existing application infrastructure. It supported compliant DevOps by standardizing team-based database development, automating database deployments, and monitoring performance. The SQL Provision solution addressed data privacy by masking and provisioning database copies for development environments.
Datical
Datical delivered database release automation capabilities designed to accelerate application delivery while reducing the security vulnerabilities, costly errors, and downtime commonly associated with manual database change processes.
Testing and Quality
Tricentis
Tricentis Tosca was a continuous testing platform designed to keep pace with Agile and DevOps delivery speeds. Tricentis claimed enterprise teams using Tosca achieved test automation rates above 90%, enabling the fast feedback loops required for CI/CD pipelines.
Sauce Labs
Sauce Labs provided a cloud-based platform for automated testing of web and mobile applications. Optimized for CI/CD environments, the platform supported tests written in any language or framework using Selenium or Appium — the two dominant open-source standards for browser and mobile application test automation.
Appvance
The Appvance IQ solution was an AI-driven, unified test automation system providing test creation and execution capabilities. It integrated directly with popular DevOps tools including Chef, CircleCI, Jenkins, and Bamboo.
Neotys
Neotys focused on continuous performance validation for web and mobile applications. Its two core products — NeoLoad for load testing and NeoSense for performance monitoring — helped teams identify performance issues earlier in the delivery cycle.
Orasi
Orasi provided software testing services and technology spanning test management, test automation, enterprise testing, continuous delivery, monitoring, and mobile testing — supporting teams regardless of application type or development methodology.
SOASTA (now part of Akamai)
SOASTA, acquired by Akamai before the 2019 showcase, specialized in performance measurement and analytics. The platform delivered real-time performance insights into the real user experience across mobile and web at scale.
Observability and Application Performance Monitoring
Instana
Instana’s APM platform was built for the realities of continuous deployment, automatically and continuously adapting to every change in the environment. It used AI-powered analysis to deliver actionable insights in seconds, enabling operations teams to keep pace with CI/CD release velocity.
Dynatrace
Dynatrace offered AI-powered application monitoring designed to help enterprises mature their DevOps practices — from CI through CD and into hybrid and cloud-native operations models. The platform aimed to bridge the gap between DevOps and what Dynatrace described as a NoOps future.
New Relic
New Relic’s SaaS-based observability platform provided a unified interface for monitoring web and native mobile applications. It offered code-level visibility for production applications across Java, .NET, Ruby, Python, PHP, and Node.js, with support for more than 60 frameworks.
Team Collaboration and Communication
Mattermost
Mattermost was an open-source messaging platform purpose-built for DevOps teams. Its on-premises and private cloud deployment model gave organizations the control required to satisfy IT and security requirements. Teams used Mattermost to automate workflows, streamline coordination, and integrate with existing DevOps toolchains.
Scaled Agile and DevOps Frameworks
Scaled Agile
Scaled Agile’s SAFe DevOps brought a shared DevOps mindset across technical, non-technical, and leadership roles. The framework guided organizations in mapping their current-state value stream from concept to delivery, identifying flow bottlenecks, and building an improvement plan to accelerate DevOps outcomes.
Mainframe and Cross-Platform DevOps
Compuware
Compuware’s toolchain enabled cross-platform teams to manage mainframe applications, data, and operations within a unified DevOps process and culture. Its tools aimed to allow any developer — not just mainframe specialists — to build, analyze, test, deploy, and manage COBOL applications.
Enterprise Application Lifecycle and Additional Vendors
Micro Focus
Micro Focus DevOps solutions emphasized continuous delivery, deployment, and continuous assessment of applications throughout the software delivery cycle. The platform also supported a Continuous Operations model enabling IT operations to support rapid application delivery without downtime.
TechExcel (DevSuite)
DevSuite helped organizations manage and standardize development and releases using Agile methods with full traceability. TechExcel partnered with test automation and CI tools — including Ranorex and Jenkins — shipping integration with these technologies out of the box.
Rogue Wave Software (by Perforce)
Rogue Wave provided platforms, tools, components, and support for building, connecting, and securing enterprise applications across financial services, healthcare, government, entertainment, and manufacturing sectors.
Summary
The SD Times 2019 DevOps Showcase illustrated how broadly the DevOps toolchain had matured by that year. Vendors had moved well beyond basic CI/CD to address specialized domains: mainframe DevOps, database release automation, AI-driven testing, value stream management, and enterprise-scale observability. Together, these tools reflected the industry’s shift toward end-to-end automation, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous feedback at every stage of software delivery.
Source: sdtimes.com — SD Times 2019 DevOps Showcase