DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES15) Spells Innovation in the Enterprise

DevOps Enterprise Summit , held last week in San Francisco, offered a glimpse into the next true wave of software delivery innovation. What started with a developer-driven Agile development movement more than a decade ago, has now evolved into an “enterprise-led” industry advancement – with DevOps moving into the mainstream of large-scale software development.
DOES15 illustrates that some of the largest, most complex, companies in the world – across all industry sectors – are leading the way in terms of adopting and scaling DevOps. Shifting cultures, promoting collaboration and automating software delivery processes are taking hold and having profound impact for the organizations that have embraced DevOps and Continuous Delivery to deliver better software faster.

DevOps Enterprise Summit 2015 by the Numbers

DOES15 Conference

• More than 1,200 attendees (double the inaugural DOES14 event) – coming from four continents

• 102 speakers

• 85 sessions including solo presentations, multi-presenters and panels

• 43 sponsors

• 3 full days of back-to-back fun!

DOES15 Media and Social Stats

• More than 10,000 tweets during the three day event (from more than 1,800 contributors)

• More than 500 photos posted on social media during the event

• More than 70 news articles and blogs written about this year’s event (and counting)

• More than 80 video interviews conducted in the conference Video Booth (stay tuned!)

• More than 30 media members and industry analysts in attendance

At the highest level, what struck me most at the conference was the level of collaboration and community. The shared passion of blazing new trails, and sharing the pitfalls and successes of the journey, was evident from the large keynote sessions and breakout presentations to scores of impromptu roundtable discussions and one-on-one conversations. All of the speaker presentations were top-flight, and included “real-world” lessons learned that each and every one of us can use along our own journey.

Here are some of the key takeaways from DOES15:

1. DevOps is a competitive advantage: DevOps being “the new Agile” has been said many times before, but the DOES15 conference really illustrated how DevOps is the next exciting frontier of our industry. This conference was not about hype-cycles, but real-world approaches and use cases that extend beyond the realm of dev teams or Ops team, and across the enterprise – encompassing both IT and the Business. DevOps is here to stay: what was once bleeding edge is now becoming mainstream, recognized to have proven results unlocking new potential and competitive advantage for the next-generation Fortune 1,000 company.

2. It’s the enterprises, not the unicorns, driving the DevOps community forward: Loved it when Jez Humble said, “Unicorns are just horses with good PR.” It’s amazing the number of “traditional” businesses that joined the conference to share their experiences and innovations around streamlined and collaborative software delivery. Not just that, but it’s clear that there isn’t a one size fits all mentality either. In fact, we heard about numerous ways to achieve better software delivery and, at the core, it’s the people in these organizations that are driving the change from the bottom-up, the top-down, and sideways.

3. Tools are cool, but culture is where it’s at: DevOps is really a set of guiding principles that are unique to each and every organization. Much of the progress being made with DevOps starts with and is based on changing the culture within the ogranization. Automation is important, but the journey to successful DevOps most often starts with a willingness to understand roles and functions outside of your “silo,” and working collectively to solve problems that may hinder responsiveness, decision-making and releasing quality products.

4. The next frontier will be in Ops innovation: Agile has clearly done its job – case in point by the numerous software and systems engineers presenting at this year’s event. The Dev side of DevOps has made plenty of strides over the past several years, but many of the presenters and use cases this year highlighted the challenges and solutions taking place on the Ops side. Rightfully so, It takes a lot of effort and orchestration to drive the delivery of quality software to market, but also to steer the internal IT culture toward maximum transparency, autonomy and collaboration. For these reasons, I believe we’ll see even more thought leadership coming from the Ops side between now and DOES16.

5. The shifting of new responsibilities and work titles: Another interesting takeaway resides in the shifts we see happening in large enterprise corporate structures. As Gene Kim introduced the speakers during the show, a majority of those that returned from the inaugural DevOps Enterprise Summit have recently been promoted, making their “DevOps” roles more critical to the long-term success of their companies. Not only that, but we heard several examples of DevOps now being in the job titles of senior-level management teams – don’t be surprised if you start seeing “VP of DevOps” titles posted on LinkedIn. Another job title becoming more prevalent is that of “Release Manager,” making me think that the final step in the end-to-end software delivery process is now front and center in these large, complex organizations.

6. DevOps and containers: It was interesting to hear about Microservices and container technologies, such as Docker, so much in the context of DevOps. We also heard that this does not come without its challenges, and therefore any approach to Microservices must add value to, and mesh with, an organization’s underlying business objectives.

Above all, we had some of the best and brightest people in the world join us at the show this year. To all that participated and helped make the show such a success – THANK YOU! You truly made this year’s conference a real “community” event. We at CloudBees had so much fun sharing, learning and growing, that the future looks brighter than ever.
In the coming weeks, stay tuned as we share plenty of highlights, photos, and of course, the videos of all the sessions. In the mean time, checkout some of the photos from the event
Hope to see you all again at DOES16!