So, yesterday Travis announced they got acquired . On one hand, it is a big deal and, on the other hand, it is not. More importantly, it speaks about the status of the CI/CD landscape.
It is a “big” deal because Travis was one of the first companies to deliver a SaaS solution for CI and, thanks to their big focus on FOSS projects hosted on GitHub, it got a strong name recognition on the market. A LOT of FOSS projects hosted at GitHub featured the Travis CI tag on their home page. As such, it became part of the landscape, the things you know are here even though you don’t necessarily see them every day. And so, from that standpoint, Travis being acquired by a private equity firm is not likely synonymous with expansion. So, part of me is a bit sad to see them “go.”
On the other hand, it is not a huge deal because other options exist, starting with our very own and excellentCodeShip . Furthermore, the specialty of Travis was, as said above, is its amazing presence among open source projects. But when it came to business users, Travis was simply not the best option. Reading the Reddit thread associated to the acquisition , you’ll see a bunch of comments from people who had migrated to other SaaS solutions as soon as their CI usage became mature enough and required reliability at all times.
More importantly, I think it speaks about the CI/CD landscape in general. CI is this amazing spot on the DevOps market because it acts as a “hub” that connects a lot of different DevOps solutions together, and, as such, can extract a lot of amazing information about what’s happening. This is a highly strategic place to be. However, being in the right place is not enough. Your strategy needs to say what you do from there. What are the insights you can provide? What’s your added value? What is the specific value you are bringing to specific audiences? If you are merely acting as “a thing that does builds when changes happen," this quickly becomes a race to the bottom.
This is why at CloudBees we are making sure we can help you along your digital transformation journey. We know that, unless you are very lucky and have no existing solution, where you start is not likely where you’ll end. From on-premises to the cloud, from classic applications to cloud native, we can work closely with you on your digital transformation. Furthermore, as we discussed at DevOps World | Jenkins World, we are building the “CRM of Software Delivery”, and are making sure that we empower your developers while making sure you, as an organization, get what you need.
Onward,
Sacha
A native of Switzerland, Sacha graduated from EPFL in 1999. At EPFL, he started Cogito Informatique, an IT consulting business. In 2001, he joined Marc Fleury’s JBoss project as a core contributor, implementing JBoss’ original clustering features. He went on to become general manager for JBoss Europe, leading strategy and helping to recruit partners that fueled JBoss’ growth. In 2005, he became CTO, overseeing all of JBoss engineering. When Red Hat acquired JBoss in 2006, Sacha played a crucial role in integrating and productizing the JBoss software with Red Hat offerings. Sacha went on to become co-general manager of Red Hat’s middleware division. He left Red Hat in 2009 and founded CloudBees in March 2010. Follow Sacha on Twitter .