GitLab users cautiously optimistic on Datadog DevSecOps deal

GitLab users have integration, pricing qualms

For one joint customer of both companies, the reported deal was initially a head-scratcher, but the possibilities became clearer on further consideration.

Maarten Smeets

"It was a bit of a surprise, but I did think about it, and it actually makes sense," said Maarten Smeets, vice president of cloud at PaaS provider Mendix, which uses GitLab's DevSecOps pipelines and consolidated its observability tooling onto Datadog three years ago. "Datadog is looking for a bigger footprint, especially in enterprises, and for them, shifting to the left in the application development process makes a lot of sense because it also drives consumption [of Datadog's application performance monitoring tools]. ... It would also give them access to assets they normally do not have access to by default, like code repositories and pipelines."

Smeets said he could also see the potential benefit of pushing Datadog's observability alerts and findings back to developers at the design phase of applications, fully closing the DevOps feedback loop. But whether he would deploy such a combined tool set would depend heavily on what the integration process looks like, he said.

The best value Datadog brings us is reducing incident triage time. If I can bring that back to point to an actual code change, module or infrastructure-as-code bit directly, that would be very helpful.

"It would be worth looking into," Smeets said. "But the best value Datadog brings us is reducing incident triage time. If I can bring that back to point to an actual code change, module or infrastructure-as-code bit directly, that would be very helpful."

Another GitLab user said he hoped that being combined into a larger entity would help the DevSecOps vendor lower its prices to beat Microsoft and GitHub.

For example, both GitLab and GitHub offer unlimited public and private code repositories in their free tiers, but GitHub includes 2,000 minutes of GitHub Actions CI/CD jobs per month for public repositories, while GitLab includes 400 pipeline minutes per group, per month, for private and public repositories. GitHub also offers access to project management features in its free tier, which GitLab lists as part of its $29 per user, per month, Premium subscription.

Anuj Tyagi

"So far we have most of our custom tooling built on GitLab, but those can be moved to GitHub easily if required," said Anuj Tyagi, a senior site reliability engineer at a communications company he requested not be named. "GitHub offers a lot of features in [its] free tier because [it] can afford to minimize [its] profits after the Microsoft acquisition. They are trying to break competitors. Jenkins is already considered old. ... GitLab is on sale now. So, slowly they are winning the race for future."

Right now, Tyagi said, his company uses GitLab for pipeline orchestration, but with its own runners, and it doesn't use any of GitLab's premium security scanning or project management features. 

A merger with Datadog "can be [beneficial], if they make changes in licensing and features," Tyagi said.

Smeets said he isn't interested in either Datadog or GitLab for security automation.

"As a [service provider], I'm always going to use best-of-breed security tools -- we use Snyk, Veracode, things like that," he said. "I would be looking more for how GitLab and Datadog can work with these through connectors than their own offerings right off the bat."

Observability vendors seek DevSecOps expansion

By acquiring a DevSecOps platform such as GitLab, Datadog would also be able to match features offered by observability rival Dynatrace, which can trigger cloud infrastructure orchestration and CI/CD pipelines through its Cloud Operations and AutomationEngine tools. Both Datadog and Dynatrace have expanded over the last five years into security observability and automation, another natural area of overlap between Datadog and GitLab.

Datadog has been aggressive in expanding its business through acquisition already, IDC's Mercer said, having made 10 acquisitions over the last five years.

"None of them have been nearly as large as GitLab," Mercer said. "[But] GitLab gives [Datadog] a strong presence with developers and could enable them to be a much bigger player who controls both the dev and ops sides of the DevOps pipeline."

Meanwhile, a senior software engineer who has worked with GitLab at multiple companies said he's skeptical that a deal will happen, and if it does, that Datadog will be the buyer.

Google would make the most sense as an acquirer given its existing partnership with GitLab, according to the software engineer, who requested anonymity because he is not permitted to represent his current employer in the press. He pointed to GitLab's integration with Google's generative AI models and Vertex AI with its GitLab Duo AI assistant as examples of their close relationship.

But many GitLab customers also favor it because of its enterprise security and privacy controls, including parity between SaaS and on-premises self-hosted versions, which could clash with more cloud-focused buyers such as Google and Datadog, the software engineer said.

Given it's a publicly traded company, GitLab's leadership "has a fiduciary duty to consider an offer," he said. "But they're in a good position financially, and maybe [somebody] has the cash on hand to make a crazy offer. But barring that, I just don't see it."

Beth Pariseau, senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial, is an award-winning veteran of IT journalism covering DevOps. Have a tip? Email her or reach out @PariseauTT.