Microsoft and GitHub: A Great Step Forward for DevOps

Microsoft just announced the acquisition of GitHub. What does this mean for developers, companies, the DevOps market, and CloudBees?

As software is eating the world, developers have become the new kings. DevOps vendors that have been able to show great developer adoption, as well as build associated revenues, are incredibly strategic.

On that front, GitHub has, without any contest, built an amazing developer magnet as well as a very successful business model. They have acted as a very positive change agent in the developer scene and have contributed, along with a dozen other companies - CloudBees obviously, but also Atlassian, JFrog, Sonatype, Docker - to initiate, reinforce and accelerate the DevOps revolution.

The net of the news is that this acquisition confirms the strategic value of DevOps.

The immediate question is whether Microsoft is a good destination for GitHub? The answer is easy: I can't think of a better destination for GitHub than "The New Microsoft." The New Microsoft totally gets developers. In our industry, they are the organization contributing the most to open source (more than Google and Amazon, combined!). They are doing amazing open source work (for example, Code and Helm). Outside of remaining independent (which no company can strictly assert they'll always remain), I think this is a good move for GitHub and the developer community.

Obviously, we can expect some knee-jerk reactions to this acquisition, but I think those will be short-lived. GitHub has built an amazing social network for developers who are likely not going to be in a hurry to leave this buzzing hive anytime soon for some temporary FUD. Furthermore, I predict Microsoft will be further investing to pursue GitHub's mission, including adding what has been lacking the most to GitHub in the last year: a leader at their top.

As such, developers and companies who have already put their trust in GitHub will benefit from this acquisition.

What does it mean for CloudBees and our customers? Our customers have a diverse development and operations environment, and our open and flexible pipeline approach protects our customers' investment. By choosing CloudBees, our customers know they will be able to leverage their DevOps investments across the board, from classic on-premise applications to next-gen Kubernetes cloud deployments. As such, we work with every major vendor from Microsoft to AWS to Google to RedHat to IBM to Apple, to bring this freedom of choice.

As the hub of DevOps, CloudBees will obviously continue to support GitHub customers and invest in GitHub and Microsoft integrations, two key participants of our partner ecosystem. In the same way, if our users decide to move to a different solution, we will be supporting them as well.

I'll see you at DevOps World |Jenkins World (in San Francisco or Nice - we have two this year!), where you can see many of the DevOps tools and cloud platforms working together.

Onward,
Sacha

Sacha Labourey
CEO and co-founder
CloudBees