To keep up with customers' ever-evolving demands, enterprise organizations are increasingly adopting DevOps practices. Embracing DevOps is not just a technical strategy; it's a strategic imperative for companies looking to quickly bring new capabilities to market. However, one of the keys to achieving DevOps at scale is having a platform that empowers development and operations teams to release quality software faster and more securely.
Instead of complex toolchains that create friction, DevOps platforms enable teams to expedite software development pipelines, foster collaboration, and deliver value faster to customers. In this article, we discuss some of the top players in the DevOps space that were named leaders in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for DevOps Platforms.
Evaluation Criteria for DevOps Tools
Gartner releases its influential reports each year to evaluate various technology vendors, providing business leaders with valuable insights to help them make informed decisions about where to invest their resources. This is Gartner’s first time evaluating DevOps platforms as part of their Magic Quadrant™ report.
Gartner analyzed 14 global DevOps technology vendors that provide fully integrated capabilities for continuous software delivery, team collaboration, secure software development, and software development metrics. Vendors were also evaluated on their ability to improve visibility throughout the entire software development life cycle (SDLC) and empower teams to deliver high-quality software efficiently.
The Best Platforms for Development And Operations Teams
GitLab
GitLab was recognized as a Leader in the 2023 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for DevOps Platforms and positioned highest for its ability to execute on strategic vision. Gartner recommends GitLab for organizations looking for a comprehensive, feature-rich DevOps platform with built-in project management capabilities and security features.
GitLab: Your One-Stop-Shop for Implementing DevOps Practices
When evaluating GitLab, Gartner states, “GitLab follows an open-core business model that enables customers and contributors to add functionality to the core platform. It adopts an open, transparent approach to building the platform by publicly sharing the issue tracker, product roadmap, and strategic direction documents that explain the rationale behind product decisions.”
Gartner also recognizes GitLab for providing a single, fully integrated platform that “helps customers to consolidate vendors, minimize operational complexity, and reduce integration efforts between disparate tools.”
Another area where GitLab excels is with its built-in security capabilities. Gartner commends GitLab’s ability to provide full visibility and traceability into the software development pipeline, from work items to code commits to applications running in production.
Atlassian
Atlassian is another leading DevOps vendor known for its platform, which is made up of the collective capabilities from Bitbucket, Confluence, Jira Software, Jira Service Management, and Opsgenie. Gartner recommends Atlassian for organizations that need a DevOps platform with service management and incident response automation capabilities.
The Collective Power of Atlassian's DevOps Tools
Gartner praises Atlassian for its “robust platform ecosystem supported by a vibrant Marketplace. The Atlassian Marketplace enables customers to discover, try, and buy apps that help tailor Atlassian’s DevOps platform to meet organization-specific needs such as planning, reporting, collaboration, automation, and ideation.”
In its evaluation of Atlassian’s DevOps platform, Gartner recognizes the tight integration between the suite of tools, especially between Jira Software and Confluence. Jira Software empowers DevOps teams to build, test, and ship software faster and more securely. Confluence seamlessly integrates with Jira Software and serves as a central collaboration tool that keeps information flowing and provides development teams with all the context they need about the software development lifecycle.
It also acknowledges Atlassian’s extensive product portfolio that “addresses the need of multiple personas across IT and business, including software engineering leaders, development teams, product and marketing managers, platform and security engineers, ITOps and site reliability engineers.”
Microsoft
Microsoft was also named a Leader in Gartner’s Magic QuadrantTM report. Microsoft offers two independent DevOps platforms, GitHub and Azure DevOps, which have various integration points and can be jointly procured via a single license. Gartner recommends Microsoft for organizations looking for a developer-friendly DevOps platform.
Microsoft's Game-Changing Platform for Software Development
In the report, Gartner applauds Microsoft for its strong developer community. With more than 100 million developers using Github, Microsoft can better understand user needs, test new capabilities, incorporate feedback, and iterate faster.
Microsoft is changing the game when it comes to AI, and its DevOps platforms are no exception. Gartner notes that “GitHub’s AI augmentation can convert comments to code (and code to comments), transpile code, auto-create pull requests, automate code reviews, create documentation, and suggest CLI commands.”
Microsoft has also done well with GitHub Codespaces, which provides a collaborative cloud development environment with configurable compute and preconfigured containers. “This helps to onboard developers more quickly and create custom configurations that would otherwise be difficult to provision on local laptops,” Gartner states.
Accelerate Your DevOps Journey with Praecipio
Successful DevOps implementations greatly depend on the use of DevOps tools that enable organizations to automate, collaborate, and innovate. Regardless of the platform you choose, Praecipio can help you adopt DevOps practices.
We offer licensing services and full-spectrum infrastructure management for all of Gartner’s leading DevOps platforms (GitLab, Atlassian, and Microsoft), in addition to other technologies that empower your teams to deliver value faster. From a leading aerospace and defense company to one of the world’s biggest media organizations, our team has designed and implemented DevOps strategies across a wide range of businesses.
No matter where you are in your DevOps journey, contact us about building a collaborative culture between your development and operations teams.
