DevOps platforms are essential for automating the entire software development lifecycle, from planning and coding to building, testing, deployment, and monitoring. These platforms integrate tools and services to help development and operations teams work together efficiently. The best DevOps platforms support continuous integration (CI), continuous delivery (CD), containerization, and cloud-native applications, providing a unified approach to software development and operations.

In this post, we will explore some of the major DevOps platforms available today, their core features, and compare them based on key factors such as ease of use, scalability, integrations, and pricing.

1. Jenkins

Major Features:

• Open-Source and Extensible:
  • Jenkins is one of the most widely used open-source automation tools for CI/CD. It offers a robust set of plugins, enabling integration with a variety of tools and services such as Git, Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS.
• Pipeline as Code:
  • Jenkins allows you to define pipelines as code using Jenkinsfiles, making it easy to version control and automate the entire build, test, and deploy pipeline. This provides flexibility and reduces manual errors.
• Scalability and Flexibility:
  • Jenkins is highly scalable and can be used by organizations of all sizes. It supports distributed builds, allowing teams to scale their CI/CD pipelines across multiple nodes to improve performance.
• Large Community and Support:
  • As an open-source tool, Jenkins benefits from a large, active community that regularly contributes plugins, documentation, and solutions to common problems.
• Customization and Integration:
  • Jenkins is highly customizable and supports integration with other tools, from version control systems to deployment platforms, ensuring seamless automation across the software lifecycle.

2. GitLab

Major Features:

• Complete DevOps Lifecycle:
  • GitLab is a fully integrated DevOps platform that covers the entire software development lifecycle. It includes source code management (Git), CI/CD, issue tracking, and monitoring, all within a single interface.
• Built-in CI/CD:
  • GitLab’s integrated CI/CD tools enable teams to create automated pipelines directly within the platform. This feature simplifies DevOps workflows by offering a seamless, out-of-the-box solution for building, testing, and deploying applications.
• Security and Compliance:
  • GitLab includes built-in security features such as static and dynamic application security testing (SAST/DAST), dependency scanning, and license compliance management. This integration ensures security is embedded in every stage of development.
• Collaboration Tools:
  • GitLab provides tools for collaboration, such as merge requests, code reviews, and issue tracking, which improve communication between development, operations, and security teams.
• Auto DevOps:
  • GitLab’s Auto DevOps feature automatically configures CI/CD pipelines and deploys applications to Kubernetes clusters, streamlining DevOps practices for teams that are new to automation.

3. CircleCI

Major Features:

• Cloud-Native CI/CD:
  • CircleCI is a cloud-based CI/CD platform that automates the software delivery process. It provides fast and reliable builds and deployments, allowing teams to focus on writing code rather than managing infrastructure.
• Docker Support:
  • CircleCI is optimized for Docker-based workflows, allowing teams to easily build, test, and deploy containerized applications. It integrates seamlessly with Docker and Kubernetes to streamline container orchestration.
• Parallelism and Speed:
  • CircleCI supports parallel execution, meaning multiple tests or builds can run simultaneously, significantly reducing build times and accelerating the feedback loop for developers.
• Integration with Popular Tools:
  • CircleCI integrates with many popular tools and services like GitHub, Bitbucket, AWS, Google Cloud, and Slack, making it easy to incorporate into existing workflows.
• Customizable Workflows:
  • CircleCI provides flexible configuration options using YAML files, enabling teams to define their CI/CD pipelines and automate workflows according to their unique requirements.

4. Azure DevOps Services

Major Features:

• Comprehensive DevOps Platform:
  • Azure DevOps is a suite of tools provided by Microsoft that supports the entire DevOps lifecycle. It includes Azure Repos for version control, Azure Pipelines for CI/CD, Azure Boards for project management, and Azure Artifacts for managing dependencies.
• Seamless Integration with Microsoft Ecosystem:
  • Azure DevOps integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft tools like Visual Studio, GitHub, and PowerShell, making it a natural choice for organizations already using Microsoft technologies.
• Scalable and Flexible:
  • Azure DevOps is suitable for teams of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. It supports multiple programming languages, platforms, and deployment environments, making it versatile for diverse DevOps needs.
• Cloud and On-Premises Support:
  • Azure DevOps can be used as a cloud-based service or installed on-premises, offering flexibility in how teams want to manage their DevOps pipelines and infrastructure.
• Advanced Reporting and Analytics:
  • Azure DevOps offers rich reporting and analytics tools to track team progress, identify bottlenecks, and optimize workflows. These features improve visibility into the DevOps process, enabling better decision-making.

5. AWS DevOps Tools

Major Features:

• Comprehensive CI/CD Solution:
  • AWS offers a suite of DevOps tools, including AWS CodeCommit for version control, AWS CodeBuild for automated builds, AWS CodeDeploy for deployment automation, and AWS CodePipeline for CI/CD orchestration.
• Cloud-Native and Highly Scalable:
  • As part of the AWS ecosystem, AWS DevOps tools are optimized for cloud-native applications. They provide seamless integration with other AWS services, such as Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, and Amazon S3, for efficient resource management and scalability.
• Security and Compliance:
  • AWS DevOps tools are built with strong security features, such as AWS IAM for access control, and integrate with other AWS security services to ensure compliance with industry standards like HIPAA and PCI DSS.
• Automation and Cost Management:
  • AWS DevOps tools provide automation for repetitive tasks, such as resource provisioning, builds, and deployments. Additionally, AWS offers cost management features to optimize spending on cloud resources.
• Serverless Capabilities:
  • AWS DevOps supports serverless architectures, allowing teams to automate serverless application deployments using AWS Lambda and other AWS services, eliminating the need for managing servers.

6. GitHub Actions

Major Features:

• Integrated CI/CD:
  • GitHub Actions is a feature of GitHub that enables teams to automate workflows directly within their GitHub repository. It allows for seamless CI/CD integration and is fully embedded within the GitHub environment.
• Custom Workflows:
  • GitHub Actions uses YAML files to define custom workflows for building, testing, and deploying applications. Teams can configure workflows based on specific events, such as push, pull request, or issue creation.
• Flexibility and Integration:
  • GitHub Actions integrates with a wide range of tools and services, including Docker, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, enabling teams to leverage existing DevOps toolchains without the need for additional platforms.
• Free for Public Repositories:
  • GitHub Actions is free for open-source repositories, making it a cost-effective option for developers working on public projects or in the open-source community.
• Built-in GitHub Ecosystem:
  • GitHub Actions integrates seamlessly with the entire GitHub ecosystem, including version control, pull requests, and code reviews, allowing for a cohesive DevOps workflow from development to deployment.

Comparison of Major DevOps Platforms

Choosing the Right DevOps Platform

Choosing the best DevOps platform depends on your organization’s specific needs, tools, and environment. Jenkins is ideal for highly customizable workflows, while GitLab offers an all-in-one solution for the entire DevOps lifecycle. CircleCI excels in cloud-native environments, and Azure DevOps is perfect for organizations leveraging Microsoft technologies. AWS DevOps provides a powerful cloud-based suite for DevOps automation, and GitHub Actions is an excellent choice for those who are already using GitHub for version control.

By evaluating your team’s workflow, preferred tools, and infrastructure, you can select the DevOps platform that best supports your goals for continuous integration, continuous delivery, and faster software development.

DevOps platforms play a crucial role in enabling collaboration between development and operations teams, automating repetitive tasks, and improving the efficiency of the software delivery lifecycle. These platforms integrate various tools and practices into a single ecosystem, streamlining the process of building, testing, deploying, and monitoring applications. By offering a centralized solution for managing the end-to-end lifecycle, DevOps platforms help teams deliver high-quality software faster and more reliably.

This post will explore some of the best DevOps platforms available today, highlighting their key features and how they contribute to a more efficient and scalable DevOps environment.

1. Jenkins

Major Features:

• Open-Source Automation:
  • Jenkins is one of the most popular open-source automation servers, enabling teams to automate parts of their software development pipeline, from building to testing and deployment.
• Extensive Plugin Ecosystem:
  • Jenkins boasts a wide range of plugins that integrate with numerous DevOps tools, such as version control systems (e.g., Git), configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible), and deployment platforms (e.g., Kubernetes). This extensibility makes it a versatile choice for a variety of DevOps workflows.
• Pipeline as Code:
  • Jenkins allows teams to define their CI/CD pipelines as code using Jenkinsfiles. This feature enables version control and the ability to manage pipelines alongside the application code, improving collaboration between developers and operations teams.
• Scalability:
  • Jenkins can scale horizontally by distributing workloads across multiple nodes. This is particularly beneficial for large teams or organizations with high demands for continuous integration and delivery.
• Active Community and Support:
  • As an open-source platform, Jenkins has a large, active community that provides a wealth of plugins, documentation, and support to ensure smooth implementation and maintenance.

2. GitLab

Major Features:

• Complete DevOps Lifecycle:
  • GitLab provides an integrated DevOps platform that covers the entire software development lifecycle, from planning and development to CI/CD, monitoring, and security.
• Built-in CI/CD:
  • GitLab’s native CI/CD capabilities allow for seamless integration of version control, code testing, building, and deployment into a unified pipeline, reducing the need for additional tools or complex configurations.
• Version Control:
  • As a Git-based platform, GitLab excels in version control, offering powerful collaboration features such as branching, merge requests, and code reviews. This helps streamline the development process and improve code quality.
• Security and Compliance:
  • GitLab offers built-in security features such as static and dynamic application security testing (SAST/DAST), dependency scanning, and license compliance management. These tools help ensure that security is integrated into every stage of the DevOps lifecycle.
• Collaboration and Project Management:
  • GitLab provides project management tools like issue tracking, Kanban boards, and milestone management, which foster collaboration between development, operations, and business teams. It also supports Agile methodologies, making it easy to plan sprints and track progress.

3. CircleCI

Major Features:

• Fast and Scalable CI/CD:
  • CircleCI offers a cloud-native CI/CD platform that provides fast build and deployment cycles, enabling teams to deliver software quickly and efficiently. It is highly scalable, accommodating teams of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.
• Customizable Pipelines:
  • CircleCI allows users to create customizable, multi-step workflows using YAML configuration files. This flexibility ensures that teams can tailor their DevOps processes to meet specific project requirements.
• Docker Support:
  • CircleCI is optimized for building and testing Docker containers, making it an excellent choice for organizations adopting containerized microservices. It offers native Docker support in its build environment, which simplifies the containerization process.
• Integration with Popular Tools:
  • CircleCI integrates with a wide array of tools and services, including GitHub, Bitbucket, Slack, and cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. These integrations help teams streamline workflows and enhance collaboration.
• Parallelism and Speed:
  • CircleCI supports parallel testing and building, which significantly speeds up the CI/CD pipeline and reduces the time needed to complete builds and deploy applications.

4. Travis CI

Major Features:

• Cloud-Based CI/CD:
  • Travis CI is a cloud-based continuous integration platform that automates the process of building, testing, and deploying applications. It integrates seamlessly with GitHub, making it a popular choice for open-source projects.
• Flexible Configuration:
  • Travis CI offers flexible configuration through .travis.yml files, enabling teams to define custom build and deployment workflows. This makes it easy to integrate the platform with different environments and requirements.
• Multi-Platform Support:
  • Travis CI supports multiple programming languages and platforms, including Java, Python, Ruby, and Node.js, as well as various deployment platforms such as AWS, Heroku, and Google Cloud.
• Easy-to-Use Interface:
  • Travis CI is known for its simple and user-friendly interface, which provides developers with clear visibility into build status, logs, and test results. This ease of use is beneficial for teams looking to get up and running quickly.
• Free for Open-Source Projects:
  • Travis CI offers free usage for open-source repositories, making it a go-to choice for many open-source communities and small projects.

5. Azure DevOps Services

Major Features:

• End-to-End DevOps Platform:
  • Azure DevOps provides a complete suite of DevOps services that cover everything from planning and version control to CI/CD, testing, and monitoring. It includes services such as Azure Repos, Azure Pipelines, Azure Test Plans, and Azure Artifacts.
• Scalability and Flexibility:
  • Azure DevOps is highly scalable, making it suitable for both small teams and large enterprises. It can handle complex workflows and provide support for multiple teams and projects.
• Integration with Microsoft Tools:
  • Azure DevOps integrates well with Microsoft tools such as Visual Studio, GitHub, and PowerShell, making it a good choice for teams already using Microsoft technologies.
• Support for Multiple Environments:
  • Azure DevOps supports a range of programming languages and platforms, including .NET, Java, Python, and Node.js. It also works with various cloud environments, such as Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud.
• Built-in Security and Compliance:
  • Azure DevOps offers robust security features, such as role-based access control (RBAC), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and automated compliance checks, ensuring secure and compliant DevOps practices.

6. Amazon Web Services (AWS) DevOps Tools

Major Features:

• Comprehensive Set of Tools:
  • AWS offers a range of DevOps tools to automate and manage software delivery, including AWS CodeCommit (source control), AWS CodeBuild (CI), AWS CodeDeploy (CD), and AWS CodePipeline (automation). These tools work together seamlessly to create a unified DevOps pipeline.
• Cloud-Native:
  • AWS DevOps tools are fully integrated with AWS cloud services, making it easier for teams to manage and deploy applications within the AWS ecosystem. These tools are optimized for cloud-native applications, offering excellent scalability and flexibility.
• Security and Compliance:
  • AWS provides robust security features, including IAM roles, encryption, and audit logging. It also offers compliance with various industry standards such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR.
• Scalable Infrastructure:
  • AWS DevOps tools support elastic scaling, ensuring that applications can scale seamlessly as demand increases. This is especially important for teams working on large, complex systems or microservices architectures.
• Fully Managed Services:
  • The AWS DevOps suite includes fully managed services that take care of infrastructure management, allowing teams to focus on writing code and improving software functionality.

Choosing the Best DevOps Platform

Choosing the right DevOps platform depends on your organization’s needs, tools, and workflows. Jenkins, GitLab, CircleCI, and Travis CI are excellent choices for teams seeking flexibility, scalability, and strong community support. On the other hand, platforms like Azure DevOps and AWS DevOps provide integrated, cloud-based solutions for teams looking for a fully managed DevOps environment.

Each platform offers unique features designed to enhance collaboration, automation, and efficiency across the entire software delivery pipeline. By selecting the platform that best aligns with your team’s goals, you can unlock the full potential of DevOps practices and drive greater success in your development process.

SAS has been named a leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms for the eighth year in a row.

The report analysed vendors based on their completeness of vision and ability to execute. It states, “To achieve fully mature, advanced analytic capabilities, organisations must plan for and invest in the end-to-end data science life cycle.

“The lifecycle includes processes for accessing and transforming data, conducting analysis and building analytic models, operationalising and embedding models, managing and monitoring models over time to reassess their relevancy, and adjusting models to reflect changes in the data and business environment.”

According to SAS, its position as a leader is thanks to its Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning platform, which is a visual and programming interface build on the SAS Viya engine.

The company states that SAS Visual Data Mining and Machine Learning supports users of all skill levels to conduct end-to-end data mining and machine learning processes, so that they can handle all tasks in the analytics lifecycle in a way that is simple and automated.

The SAS Viya Platform, which is cloud-native software that enables organisations to leverage analytics, was released in February. The company says the platform is designed for continuous delivery and updates.

“SAS Viya helps organisations see their data, customers and operations in new ways that encourage confident decision making,” explains SAS CEO and founder Jim Goodnight.

“Organisations expect to accelerate innovation and reduce costs when they operationalize analytics.”

The company says that SAS Viya provides the missing layer between models developed in multiple languages and the systems where they’re deployed, eliminating the need for time-consuming recoding to deploy models.

At launch, SAS Viya was made available on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, building on the companies’ strategic partnership announced last year.

Microsoft vice president of global ISV sales, Casey McGee, says the innovation will provide customer experience and analytics that can enable businesses to make decisions faster.

“The partnership we have with SAS has helped our customers accelerate growth and expand their digital transformation initiatives,” says McGee.

SAS AI strategist Susan Kahler adds, “Across the globe, organisations are aspiring to operationalise analytics and accelerate artificial intelligence adoption to facilitate better, more intelligent business decisions.”

“SAS advanced analytic solutions, which offer innate integrations with popular open source tools, give users at all levels of an organisation access to agile, powerful advanced machine learning to help master the complex data that’s in cloud environments.”

Take a random sample of internet traffic or traffic flowing across the average enterprise network, and you will probably find that the majority (some estimates put the figure as high as 70%) of packets are destined for, coming from, or are related in some way to API activity.

Even applications that could be described as monolithic usually comprise discrete modules, services, microservices, and so on, which function internally by means of APIs. Regardless of design, even an individual application’s topology often spans multiple public clouds, on-premise resources, edge-based facilities, leased real estate in data centers, and so on. Multiply the complexity of a single application or service by a large number, and the predominance of API-related traffic is explained.

Therefore, machine-to-machine data can be regarded as comprising critical traffic, and managing such traffic comprises essential activity for IT departments. As well as handling structural issues, there are also considerations of security, traffic prioritization, routing issues, API call SLAs, and much, much more. Little wonder that products that rather modestly describe themselves as “API gateways” or “API management suites” are now considered pivotal parts of the entire IT stack.

Here at TechHQ, we consider three vendors of API Management systems that go beyond monitoring and maintaining APIs. Each is capable of deployment across hybrid environments and offers scalability and elasticity that will fit in with teams’ agile approach to providing the services demanded of them.

Simplifying and securing API estate needs to be a short- to medium-term goal, and with the products we feature here, achieving this alone should provide a return on investment.

Furthermore, because data/information is now rightfully regarded as the most valuable commodity an organization can access, each of the featured vendors also goes beyond providing the basics of reliability and security. Examples include API change audits that correspond with the business’s change management procedures in ITIL workflows or consolidate data from multiple gateways.

There is also a case for leveraging these platforms for analysis to discover use trends across APIs to allocate attention and resources better. The same metrics can be used by BI and reporting suites to create viable SLAs for internal stakeholders and external partners alike. And as organizations make deeper forays into microservices as part of their development activities, there will be a greater need for dependency tracking to keep applications running (obviously) and ensure continuing compliance with data regulations.

It’s sometimes difficult to take a step back from the technical complexities of the solutions we feature below and try to look more objectively at the desired outcomes for enterprise IT decision-makers considering their options. Keeping a business-first mentality that’s focused on outcomes required by the greater enterprise is the end goal, but we feel the vendors covered here are beyond the point of pushing a product for its technical “smarts.” Each is conversant with the pressures on corporate-level IT today and offers answers to the questions being posed to IT professionals in boardrooms across the world. Given the immense importance of APIs in today’s technology-driven world, finding long-term partners for this area of the IT stack is probably one of the more important decisions you will take in your career.

NEVATECH

Since its first offering, the Sentinet API Management platform has been designed to offer a unified solution in very diverse networks.

Any Sentinet component works the same way regardless of where they are deployed: on-premise, in hybrid environments, and cloud settings. Deployments are not limited by their particular subnet, so an on-premise Sentinent can oversee APIs in the DMZ, or highly-restricted testing environments, or full production settings, using the same interface and the same toolset.

Use-case aggregation includes providing the same utility to all areas of the wider network so that production systems can be monitored for SLA violations. At the same time, alerts are given to DevOps teams to help them manage APIs actively and pro-actively to anticipate and remedy operational malfunctions. Sentinet also supports microservice-based applications by offering aggregated access and central view on the isolated microservices.

Nevatech aims to simplify API infrastructure and reduce the number of vendors on which the IT department depends for this mission-critical area of the enterprise. That has obvious security and reliability plus-es while reducing overheads and resource-drain. The Sentinet platform’s interoperability gives decision-makers the ability to migrate environments without massive reconfiguration of API management nodes creating roadblocks, and the same ability also ensures an unchanging security posture.

Traffic flow monitoring and predictive analysis mean procurement and resource planning for expansion or new projects becomes simpler. At the same time, security standards remain high thanks to granular access, security tokens and key management systems.

AXWAY

The AMPLIFY API Management platform helps teams create and publish APIs from the cloud or on-premise server instances and then provides management frameworks to monitor and control all APIs across the enterprise.

There are built-in analysis tools in AMPLIFY so that users can see live operational data or even developer uptake metrics (API “popularity contests,” if you will).

The analysis routines can flag anomalies and report on overall API stack health, or users can use “traditional” logfile analysis, Splunk, and so on — the AMPLIFY API Management system is as extensible as an API.

Axway is a heavily business-focused outfit, and the AMPLIFY platform can be used to monetize API use easily, making APIs reusable: develop once, deploy (and charge) multiple times. That facility is via AMPLIFY Central Service, which centralizes monetary issues like charges and subscriptions of every and any API across the enterprise.

Axway is building a complete developer and user community for its products, with an internal marketplace available to all subscribers where code and methodologies can be shared, thus vastly improving time to market for new services’ APIs.

Research firm Gartner has positioned Microsoft as a Leader in the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Industrial IoT Platforms. Microsoft enables organizations to develop their own IoT solutions with Microsoft Azure platform services such as Microsoft Azure IoT Hub, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics, or Microsoft Azure Time Series Insights, or purchase IoT solutions directly from Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

“Microsoft demonstrates consistent development and solution accelerators, specifically for industrial enterprises,” Gartner mentioned in its report. Gartner mentioned the following as strengths and cautions of Microsoft’s IIoT solution.

Strengths:

Microsoft has customers with production deployments that span core operations, supply chain and industrial field deployments for manufacturing, transportation and logistics, and utilities.

Customers are very positive relating to Microsoft’s approach to security for IIoT. Azure Sphere enhances device security to protect from cybersecurity and device encryption.
Microsoft has a large, diverse partner ecosystem for both technology platforms and indirect sell-through partners.
Microsoft has broad visibility in the market based on the frequency with which the company appears in buyers’ evaluations for IIoT platforms.

Cautions:
Emerging Azure IoT Edge modules may be challenging to manage as both first party and third party mature through the development life cycle.
While Microsoft’s horizontal IoT technology can functionally support most customers’ IoT requirements, most customers need or prefer to have Microsoft partners to act as intermediaries for solution planning and feature engineering. Customers feel this helps them leverage Microsoft technologies into end-to-end IoT solutions.
To extract data from some OT systems, industrial equipment may need third-party protocol software or Edge modules to integrate into Azure IoT.
The Azure portal has a highly customizable UI, but plug-ins or third-party modules may need to be leveraged to track service performance, utilization and health all in one page.

Sectigo Certificate Manager offers integrations with five of the most popular DevOps configuration management and container orchestration platforms: Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Terraform, and HashiCorp Vault, delivering the industry’s most comprehensive PKI solution for DevOps. (Graphic: Business Wire)September 11, 2019 07:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

ROSELAND, N.J.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sectigo, the world’s largest commercial Certificate Authority (CA) and a provider of purpose-built and automated PKI management solutions, today released integrations with five of the most popular DevOps configuration management and container orchestration platforms. The additions of Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Terraform, and soon HashiCorp Vault, deliver the industry’s most comprehensive PKI solution for DevOps. This unique combination of solutions will immediately help IT teams ensure their DevOps environments follow accepted security practices, meet compliance and auditability requirements, and provide crypto agility.

Sectigo releases industry-first PKI DevOps integrations for broad range of configuration management and orchestration platforms, including Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible & more.Tweet this

“All sizeable enterprises either use or are implementing DevOps today,” said Lindsay Kent, VP of Product Management, Sectigo. “As they do so, these enterprises are also finding that they suddenly need to become PKI experts and must roll out their own PKI to ensure identity for containers and related services.”

This exercise puts the enterprise in jeopardy as IT generalists must suddenly select, configure, and implement public key schemes without the benefit of background in this specialized field. Considerations like key size, certificate term length, and code deployment process all affect the security and compliance of containerized environments. As operations spin up DevOps environments, they often find themselves forced to make decisions about these and other aspects of PKI even though they may not understand the full consequences of these choices.

“These integrations between Sectigo Certificate Manager and the most popular DevOps orchestration tools give operations teams full visibility and control over the certificate properties they choose. An expert partner, like Sectigo, can ensure enterprises follow accepted security practices and can keep implementations current with changes in cryptography needed to stay safe in a changing computing environment,” added Kent.

The variety of certificates and specific use cases in any given DevOps environment is quite broad, as these are complex environments using many different technologies in conjunction. Supporting integrations with a variety of orchestration tools helps cover the enterprise’s complete operational footprint. Sectigo Certificate Manager integrates with supported tools using ACME (Automated Certificate Management Environment) or Sectigo’s RESTful APIs.

“Certificate-based authentication is a foundational element in many DevOps use cases, and one that often grows in complexity when an enterprise considers details such as public versus private servers, client authentication, and more,” said Fernando Montenegro, Principal Analyst, 451 Research. “We see a notable benefit for organizations to be able to use certificate management platforms that can address this complexity while integrating with popular configuration management and orchestration tools.”

New Sectigo Certificate Manager Integrations

IT teams will notably benefit from a centralized management platform that can be used to enforce the security policies across the organization. The Sectigo Certificate Manager platform is used by hundreds of enterprises across the globe to issue, renew, and manage certificates for their mission-critical applications. That means DevOps teams benefit from the reliability and speed of issuance that comes with a proven platform. In addition, if enterprises prefer, they can continue to use their DevOps tool or another PKI implementation for issuance and still use Sectigo Certificate Manager to monitor and report on their certificate deployments.

Sectigo’s latest integrations to its Certificate Management platform include:

• Docker— Allows DevOps teams to more easily create, deploy and run applications, delivering even greater value when paired with solutions like Kubernetes. By integrating with Docker, Sectigo can issue short lived public or private certificates to the applications running inside the Docker container.
• Kubernetes — Automates scaling, managing, updating, and removing containers, giving IT teams the flexibility needed to deliver applications consistently, no matter the size of the enterprise. Sectigo’s Kubernetes integration enables seamless certificate issuance and management using the Kubernetes native certificate controller.
• Ansible — Ansible-based automation aids lifecycle management for large certificate volumes in heterogeneous environments. By leveraging one of the leading tools in configuration management and server provisioning, Sectigo’s Ansible module eliminates complex security decision making and provides a transparent, platform-agonistic user experience for provisioning and managing TLS and client certificates.
• Terraform— This open-source tool creates, changes, and improves infrastructure. Sectigo’s Terraform integration enables the enrollment, collection, and revocation of certificates. Paired with HashiCorp Vault, Terraform provides secure storage for certificates and keys.
• HashiCorp Vault — HashiCorp Vault centrally manages and enforces access to secrets and systems based on trusted application sources and user identities. Sectigo Certificate Manager can assign certificates to applications protected by Vault and store keys and certificates used in DevOps environments.

About Sectigo

Sectigo provides award-winning purpose-built and automated PKI management solutions to secure websites, connected devices, applications, and digital identities. As the largest commercial Certificate Authority, trusted by enterprises globally for more than 20 years, and more than 100 million SSL certificates issued in over 200 countries, Sectigo has the proven performance and experience to meet the growing needs of securing today’s digital landscape. For more information,

Overview

AT&T and Dell Technologies announced a collaboration to advance several open source projects focused on container orchestration and cloud-native infrastructure. The partnership centers on reducing friction in deploying and managing containerized workloads at scale — both on virtual machines and, increasingly, on bare-metal servers.

Key Open Source Projects in Scope

The collaboration targets three specific open source initiatives:

• AirShip — A management framework that combines OpenStack and Kubernetes to provide declarative, automated cloud provisioning and lifecycle management for containerized applications. AT&T originally launched the project, and both companies committed to accelerating its next major release.
• Metal3-io — A project focused on simplifying the provisioning of Kubernetes clusters directly on bare-metal hardware, removing the dependency on a hypervisor layer.
• OpenStack Ironic — The OpenStack service for bare-metal provisioning. Both companies committed contributions to improve the process of deploying OpenStack directly on physical servers.

Both companies also pledged contributions to the Kubernetes Cluster API, which provides a declarative API for cluster lifecycle management and is central to integrating Kubernetes with infrastructure providers such as OpenStack and bare-metal environments.

The Case for Bare-Metal Kubernetes

Eric Vallone, Director of Service Provider Solutions at Dell Technologies, stated that Dell is committed to enabling joint deployments of OpenStack and Kubernetes — whether on virtual machines or bare-metal servers. At the time of the announcement, virtual machine-based deployments were the dominant pattern for both platforms.

However, running Kubernetes directly on bare-metal offers meaningful advantages for certain workloads:

• Reduced overhead — Eliminating the hypervisor layer removes the performance and resource cost associated with running workloads inside virtual machines.
• Heterogeneous hardware support — Bare-metal Kubernetes clusters can more readily incorporate specialized processors such as GPUs and FPGAs, which are increasingly important for AI, ML, and network processing workloads.
• Tighter hardware utilization — Containerized workloads on bare metal can take full advantage of physical server resources without the abstraction tax of a guest OS and hypervisor.

Vallone acknowledged that this trajectory has implications for VMware — a Dell Technologies subsidiary — whose core business is built around hypervisor-based virtualization. Dell’s apparent bet is that VMware can evolve its portfolio to serve as a management layer bridging legacy virtualized environments and modern cloud-native, Kubernetes-based infrastructure.

AT&T’s 5G Containerization Strategy

AT&T’s motivation for the collaboration is rooted in its 5G network transformation. The carrier has publicly committed to replacing proprietary network infrastructure with open source software running on industry-standard hardware. Containers are central to that strategy: deploying 5G network functions as containerized workloads enables AT&T to build, update, and scale services with the agility that software-defined networking demands.

Beyond internal network functions, AT&T has signaled an intent to cultivate a third-party developer ecosystem — allowing external developers to build and deploy containerized applications on AT&T-managed platforms.

To support this infrastructure shift, AT&T will deploy a mix of Dell-branded and white-box servers in place of the proprietary infrastructure used for 3G and 4G network delivery, according to Vallone. This positions Dell to build expertise in carrier-grade, cloud-native deployments that it can then translate into commercial offerings for enterprise customers undergoing similar transformations.

Broader Industry Implications

The AT&T–Dell partnership reflects a wider industry trend: major carriers and infrastructure vendors are redirecting significant engineering resources toward cloud-native computing frameworks. As both AT&T and Dell face competitive pressure in their respective markets, their investment in open source container infrastructure is likely to accelerate adoption across the broader telco and enterprise IT sectors.

Projects like AirShip, Metal3-io, and the Kubernetes Cluster API benefit directly from this kind of large-scale industrial participation — contributions from organizations operating at carrier scale tend to surface integration requirements and edge cases that smaller contributors may not encounter.

Summary

When larger enterprises need a way to keep their martech from spiraling out of control, continuous deployment and integration pipelines from container automation can help.

Imagine a world where you can easily manage containerized applications across multiple environments. This is the world of Kubernetes, and learning to implement it will change your life because this model can help marketers manage data more efficiently across platforms.

It allows you to have ultimate control over how your applications should run, and how they interact with other systems in a more globalized environment. In order to fully understand the beauty of Kubernetes and how it relates to continuous development, it’s important to understand the open-source architecture of the containers and how they work.

What are Kubernetes containers?

The system was originally developed by Google, given to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and is now becoming the containerizing standard for most cloud-based business apps. The goal of the platform is to allow more concise, customized management of assets and services across a multitude of environments. In an increasingly globalized business model, this ability is imperative to remaining viable.

The architecture is constructed in layers, with the main server acting as the master among a cluster of machines that make up the infrastructure of that particular network. Each machine within this grouping is assigned a specific function, with the master server acting as the main control and switchboard. It receives requests from end-users, exposes API, performs health checks on nodes within the network of servers and schedules tasks to whichever server is designated to complete them.

Further down the chain are nodes, or individual servers within the larger network. These servers receive instructions from the master server and manage workloads or assigned tasks, creating or destroying containers according to what’s required to complete them.

Speed and scale is good for marketing

All of this is set in motion by the logic contained within Kubernetes. At its most basic, Kubernetes containers are a means of quickly deploying microservices at a scale unheard of in the past. These containers allow mass deployment and workload management within a cluster of computers without the need for manual intervention or human oversight. In conjunction with other intuitive technologies like blockchain, it’s changing how software development is performed and implemented.

The old way of doing things required a monolithic program to which a hodgepodge of features or functions were added as needed until there was an unwieldy, unmanageable mess that could crash by changing one simple component.

In a world where agility is paramount and downtime leads to death, that’s unsustainable.

Enter the concept of microservices and containerized deployment. The idea is to develop micro-applications that perform a specific function well but are supportable in a range of environments and compatible with other, related applications. According to Nic Grange, CTO at Retriever Communications, microservices are “an approach to designing software systems that are made up of small independent services that each have a specific purpose.”

The most efficient way of deploying such services is via a containerized platform.

How the system fits within a continuous development model

Continuous deployment and integration pipelines enable automated container creation. Previously, new software had a major release, followed by periodic updates and patches as needed. The continuous deployment model means that every code change is automatically sent to a staging area to be vetted and sent out. It should be noted that, despite the tremendous benefits, the new process is just as susceptible to hacker threats as a traditional environment.

In other words, crypto mining, ransomware, data theft and service disruption attributed to all variety of malware are still not only possible but likely in a Kubernetes environment. To take advantage of the benefits of continuous delivery and deployment means that a marketer still needs the same underlying security precautions. This should include a credible security software suite and firewall to detect, block, and eliminate incoming malware threats, as well as a virtual private network (VPN) for encrypting traffic over your network. A VPN works by creating an encrypted “tunnel” (i.e., a connection to the internet that protects all browsing session data from would-be hackers).

With a continuous deployment model that incorporates the growing devsecops philosophy, changes or rollbacks are possible at any point in the development cycle, which allows for the kind of backward compatibility necessary to avoid synchronized releases. It can also be implemented to ensure uninterrupted delivery of services.

In a Kubernetes ecosystem, it works like this:

• Each Kubernetes container is a pod that contains a code (Docker image) housed in an isolated environment.
• The pods, or nodes, are housed in the same network of servers, where they have predefined functions. For example, one pod communicates with the local host server and locates another container within the same pod that’s accessible to the assigned port.
• Because pods are mortal and disappear if the system crashes, continuous deployment tracks the pods and ensures that they’re reassigned to a working server if the current server crashes or become disabled.
• The applications run within the Kubernetes cluster.

Why should marketers care?

Utilizing Docker engines allows you to deploy applications simultaneously on separate machines, providing a high degree of scalability. You can ramp your capabilities up or down automatically. Previously, applications were deployed by developers by introducing an XML document into an isolated process space. With the transition to cloud-based app deployment and storage, it was necessary to find an open source platform that could perform this function automatically and integrate it into a range of environments.

This saves marketers time and money by making the implementation of data–driven marketing faster and more efficient. Apps are portable enough to move them from one platform to another, such as cloud to physical machine and back, with less hands-on to run once the system is in place. When a larger enterprise with a lot of moving parts needs a system to keep their app deployment from spiraling out of control, automation is your friend.

You can house a customer database in one container, your caching server on another, and the front-end on yet another, with the combination of a master server and continuous deployment to ensure that it all runs as planned without the need for hands-on oversight or a large team to manage everything. It enables virtualization of marketing campaigns that’s possible on any scale. Using this model allows you to control costs without sacrificing service, and you can enjoy all of the benefits of a cloud-based or hybrid platform without all the hassle.

Final thoughts

The future of digital marketing and work environments of almost every kind lies in developing secure, open source platforms that are able to intuitively perform service delivery over a range of platforms and environments. This level of agility and scalability are realized in the creation of Kubernetes containers. It may seem complicated at first. But, once you learn the ropes, you’ll wonder how you were able to conduct business without it.