AWS re:Invent is both energizing and exhausting all at the same time. Come on... admit it, you think so too! But, it is actually one of my favorite events of the year. It is just me and approximately 65,000 of my best friends coming together to hear what AWS is up to and how it will effect GitLab and our joint users.
AWS announcements and how they relate to GitLab
Transformation. I am a sucker for a transformation theme and AWS didn’t disappoint this year. Whether we are talking transformation personally or in our business, I can’t help but visualize a caterpillar transforming into a beautiful butterfly.
AWS internally reflected as well as challenged their customers to think about “How should we reinvent ourselves?” In the keynote with Andy Jassy, Goldman Sachs, and Verizon each told their stories about transforming their business with AWS. While each story was a little different, they all talked about what they have accomplished with AWS.
I sat back and reveled in the fact that the ‘untold’ story of Goldman Sachs is that GitLab’s DevOps platform is used exclusively by their dev teams across the entire software development lifecycle. They have been able to remove toolchain complexity while going from providing a build once every two weeks to over a thousand per day. Talk about a transformation. Just imagine the velocity in their build cycle that they are able to achieve.
Amazon Fargate for Amazon EKS.: Customers asked and AWS took action by launching Amazon Fargate for Amazon EKS. This is big news seeing that 84% of all Kubernetes installations run on AWS. So if you are looking to manage your containers at the task level, this announcement should have you dancing in your seat. Two out of five new container customers choose to start their container journey with Amazon Fargate, citing its overall ease of use. GitLab already supports Amazon Fargate and Amazon EKS, so it is very natural that we are excited about this new launch. Have a look at our Trek10 customer case study to learn more about how it is using GitLab and Amazon Fargate today.
AWS Graviton: AWS announced the next generation of Graviton with native runners for 32 and 64-bit ARM-based processors. GitLab already supports this service and our customers are already contributing.
WAG!’s phased approach to ‘Dog’Ops...errrrr DevOps
Dave Bullock from Wag! went through the first two phases of the transformation journey with both AWS and GitLab. Some of my favorite highlights from his talk, in his words, were:
“Automate all the things!”
“We wanted Dev to work locally to test and monitor themselves so they take ownership.”
“Everything as code! Code, not clicks!”
“Everything is built into the pipeline...if something happens you can rollback at each step.”
“Change is hard, things break! No one is perfect.”
Watch the full Wag! story from AWS re:Invent.
The importance of early security
Brandon Jung, our VP of alliances and board member at the Linux Foundation, sat down with Stu Miniman and John Walls, hosts of theCUBE, to talk about how GitLab empowers DevOps while making CISOs happy. Brandon explained how GitLab users are able to include security earlier in the software development process, which saves them money because they're not iterating in the production phase.
Watch Brandon’s full interview.
Do you want to play a game?
We love games here at GitLab and were thrilled to be the featured SCM tool used in AWS GameDay at re:Invent this year. AWS GameDay is an interactive team-based learning exercise designed to give players a chance to put their AWS skills to the test in a real-world, gamified, risk-free environment. Expect to see us "play" a bigger role in AWS GameDay in 2020.
This year, the GitLab DevOps Diner-themed booth earned an honorable mention for the best booth by AWS. Our corporate events team stayed laser-focused and each and every corner of the booth, including the swag, had the diner theme. My personal fav was the jams on the jukebox – I think this is a must-have in every one of our booths. We are already thinking about how to outdo the diner theme in 2020.
Let’s keep the conversation going...what were your favorite parts at re:Invent this year? Comment here or ping me on Twitter @t_sturgis!
