| PMM | TMM |
|---|---|
| Brian Glanz @brianglanz and Cormac Foster @cfoster3 | William Arias @warias |
The DevOps Platform usecase is applicable for customers who are aware of the efficiencies to be gained by end to end DevOps but have not been able to achieve expected results due to a hodge podge of tools and integrations, siloed teams, cultural misalignment, lack of visibility and/or collaboration. In such scenarios, the GitLab value of a single application from idea to production inclusive of monitoring and security is appealing to the customer.
The worldwide DevOps market is expected to grow with a growth rate of 20 percent from $3.5 Bn in 2018 to $10.5 Bn in 2024. Increasing adoption of agile frameworks, cloud technologies, and digitization of enterprises to automate business processes are driving the growth.
In their Market Guide for DevOps Value Stream Delivery Platforms, Gartner's Strategic Planning Assumption was:
“By 2023, 40% of organizations will have switched from multiple point solutions to DevOps value stream delivery platforms to streamline application delivery, versus less than 10% in 2020.”
Market Guide for DevOps Value Stream Delivery Platforms, Manjunath Bhat, Hassan Ennaciri, Chris Saunderson, Daniel Betts, Thomas Murphy, Joachim Herschmann, 28 September 2020
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
GitLab believes this indicates that the market for a DevOps platform delivered as a single application will grow much faster than the DevOps market as a whole.
While they share a similar name, GitLab's "Open DevOps Platform" brand messaging and the "DevOps Platform" use case are distinct and independent.
"Open DevOps Platform" is high-level brand messaging that describes our company, our product philosophy, and the relationship between the two. It is focused on the positive, transformational outcomes of enaging with the company and using the product.
"DevOps Platform" is a customer use case that describes a discrete customer problem that GitLab solves. The DevOps Platform use case is more targeted and narrowly scoped than the Open DevOps Platform brand messaging, focusing on explaining the benefits of a complete platform, deployed as a single application, addressing specific Market Requirements with product-specific differentiators.
As an example of overlap between the brand messaging and the customer use case, consider that extensibility is one of the Market Requirements of the solution. "How GitLab delivers" that includes a couple aspects of what "Open" means:
Dozens of project integrations, Webhooks, and an open core model in which everyone can contribute directly to the GitLab project.
As an example of the distinction between the two, consider our public roadmap and handbook.
While the two motions serve different audiences and purposes, they do share a large amount of common messaging, as the Visibility, Collaboration, and Velocity pillars of the Open DevOps Platform (and the resulting outcomes of Iteration and Innovation) are also important to the DevOps Platform solution.
There are two primary user personas:
Devon - the DevOps Engineer Devon assists multiple different teams with varied needs. A single DevOps platform provides a consistent and efficient development experience, eliminating the burden of supporting unique, team-specific implementations.
Delaney - the Development Team Lead Delaney is responsible for communication and collaboration throughout the entire product lifecycle, and requires end-to-end visibility into work items and status to accurately estimate capacity, plan features, and coordinate with all parties. A single DevOps platform provides those services natively, allowing Delaney to access necessary information as needed, without dependencies.
End to end DevOps requirements typically involve executive involvement - VP of DevOps, VP of Engineering, VP of Innovation and above.
The two primary buyer personas are:
| Market Requirement | Description | Typical capability-enabling features | Value/ROI |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Agile Management | The solution supports the planning, initiating, monitoring, controlling, closing, and measuring the value created by Agile teams and projects. | Requirements, Epics, Features, Stories, Iterations, Backlogs, Roadmaps, Boards | Allows businesses to budget for, prioritize, deliver, and assess the success of innovation initiatives. |
| 2. Version Control & Collaboration | Control and manage different versions of the application assets from code to configuration and from design to deployment. | Typical capability-enabling features | Value/ROI |
| 3. Continuous Integration | Automate and streamline build and test to improve quality and velocity. | Build automation, test automation, pipeline configuration management, visibility & collaboration, multi-platform and language support, pipeline security, and more (see full list) | CI makes software development easier, faster and less risky for development teams. |
| 4. Security | Shift security left and make it relevant throughout the delivery lifecycle. | Typical capability-enabling features | Value/ROI |
| 5. Continuous Delivery | Streamline and automate delivering and deploying code to different environments. | Progressive Delivery, Roll out scenarios, Feature Flags, Review Apps, Post Deployment Monitoring | Consistent and repeatable release processes, faster time to market and lower risk releases |
| 6. Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance | Define, enforce and report on compliance policies and frameworks | Requirements Management, Policy Management, Audit Management | Value/ROI |
| 7. Incident Management | Organize multiple inputs into actionable workflows to allow the appropriate people to remedy anomolous condiitions. | Typical capability-enabling features | Value/ROI |
| 8. Extensibility | Extend the system to work with business applications, external data sources, and legacy point solutions. | Webhooks, APIs | Customize DevOps platform to any workflow or business need, adopt end-to-end DevOps incrementally |
| Market Requirements | How GitLab Delivers | GitLab Stage/Category | Demos |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Agile Management | Project, program, and portfolio management within a single system, enhanced by complete visibility into the work being done and the efficiency of value delivery. | Plan stage: Epics, Iterations, Milestones, Requirements Management. Manage stage: Value Stream Analytics, Insights. |
– |
| 2. Version Control & Collaboration | – | – | – |
| 3. Continuous Integration | Architect CI pipelines with .gitlab-ci.yml files, structure CI processes, run automated tests, security scans, and build your app using GitLab Runner as the execution agent. See code quality analysis and code coverage details from source code. Get feedback on code changes directly in GitLab. Manage packages, repositories, and containers along with their dependencies in GitLab. See full list here | Verify, Package, and Release, and Secure | – |
| 4. Security | – | – | – |
| 5. Continuous Delivery | Unified, automated deployment and monitoring strategies with modern compliance within a single application | Release Stage: Continuous Delivery, Review Apps, Advanced Deployments, Feature Flags, Release Evidence, Secrets Management Monitor Stage: Metrics, Logging, Tracing, Error Tracking Verify: Browser Performance Testing |
 Application Release Automation & Delivery Feature flags |
| 6. Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance | – | – | – |
| 7. Incident Management | – | – | – |
| 8. Extensibility | Dozens of project integrations, Webhooks, and an open core model in which everyone can contribute directly to the GitLab project. | Manage stage: Integrations | – |
| Differentiator | Value | Proof Point |
|---|---|---|
| A Single Application for the Entire DevOps Lifecycle | A single application eliminates complex integrations, data chokepoints, and toolchain maintenance, resulting in greater productivity. | - |
| End-to-End Visibility | GitLab's common data model enables enables end-to-end visibility and traceability throughout the DevOps lifecycle, correlating and aggregating data automatically. | - |
| Your software, deployed your way | GitLab is infrastructure agnostic (supporting GCP, AWS, Azure, OpenShift, VMware, On Prem, Bare Metal, and more), offering a consistent workflow experience - irrespective of the environment. | - |
The message house for the use case provides a structure to describe and discuss the value and differentiators for the use case.
tbd
Amongst the many competitors in the DevOps space, Azure DevOps provides the most comprehensive end-to-end Devops capabilities, with GitHub continuing to build toward a similar vision.
For a list of analysts with a current understanding of GitLab's capabilities for this use case, please reach out to Analyst Relations via Slack (#analyst-relations) or by submitting an issue and selecting the "AR-Analyst-Validation" template.
<List of customer quotes/reviews from public sites>
One tool for SCM+CI/CD was a big initial win. Now wrapping security scans into that tool as well has already increased our visibility into security vulnerabilities. The integrated Docker registry has also been very helpful for us. Issue/Product management features let everyone operate in the same space regardless of role.
Adam Dehnel, Product Architect, BI Worldwide
Development can move much faster when engineers can stay on one page and click buttons to release auditable changes to production and have easy rollbacks; everything is much more streamlined. Within one sprint, just 2 weeks, Glympse was able to implement security jobs across all of their repositories using GitLab’s CI templates and their pre-existing Docker-based deployment scripts.
Zaq Wiedmann, Lead Software Engineer, Glympse
GitLab has allowed us to dramatically increase the velocity of development in our Engineering Division. We believe GitLab’s dedication to helping enterprises rapidly and effectively bring software to market will help other companies achieve the same sort of efficiencies we have seen inside Goldman Sachs. We now see some teams running and merging 1000+ CI feature branch builds a day!
Andrew Knight, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs
Inventory of key pages in the buyer's Journey
| Awareness learning about the problem |
Consideration looking for solution ideas |
Decision is this the right solution |
|---|---|---|
| DevOps platform topic page | DevOps platform solution page | proof points |
| landing pages? | ?comparisons? | comparisons |
| -etc? | - product page x - product page y - product page z |
