Now On DevOps Radio: Choice Hotels and the “Inn-side” Scoop on DevOps Adoption

In this episode, Brian Mericle , distinguished engineer at Choice Hotels International, “checks in” with DevOps Radio host, CloudBees CMO and occasional Jenkins butler, Andre Pino to provide the inn-side scoop on what Choice Hotels - the 75+ year-old franchise that includes Comfort Suites, Comfort Inn, Sleep Inn and Cambria brands - is doing in terms of deployment. He’ll also share his secrets for managing big DevOps teams, without reservations.

Brian explains how Choice Hotel’s DevOps adoption was driven by the need to maintain a competitive advantage in terms of its website and services. Choice Hotels provides web-based services to its franchisees and, in this case, needed to update the central reservation system used by the various Choice Hotels properties to book rooms. The goal was to get to market faster and be a driving force in the market, but manual patterns and processes were presenting roadblocks. By implementing DevOps, Choice Hotels was able to accelerate the upgrade of its central reservation system.

Choice Hotels employees a 250+ person development staff. Brian admits that with a team that big, transitioning to a DevOps culture does not happen overnight. Brian believes there is no such thing as over-communication, and that everyone in IT should always know what’s happening. He tries to meet with all his teams in order to ensure transparency. Sounds like five-star hospitality to us!

This “suite” episode is available now on the CloudBees website and on iTunes. You can also join the conversation on Twitter by tweeting out to @CloudBees and including #DevOpsRadio in your post. Before you check-out make sure you subscribe to DevOps Radio where you can catch up on past episodes.