DevOps consolidation continues with JFrog and Shippable
JFrog's acquisition of Shippable gives JFrog another arrow in its DevOps quiver and enables its customers to use an integrated DevOps platform that includes CI/CD.
JFrog's recent acquisition of Shippable is one of many moves in the DevOps market as software vendors look to provide a single source for developers who want to consolidate their tool boxes.
JFrog's Feb. 21 acquisition adds CI/CD to the company's comprehensive DevOps platform. Previously, JFrog encouraged developers to use the CI/CD server of their choice. It still does that, except now the company can provide its own product for customers who want one place to support DevOps from code commit to production. Some alternatives to Shippable include CloudBees' Jenkins, Atlassian's Bamboo, Bitnami, CircleCI, Travis CI, JetBrains' TeamCity and Microsoft's Team Foundation Server.
"With this move, JFrog adds Shippable's CI/CD and DevOps automation, which has evolved with cloud-native software such as containers and Kubernetes," said Jay Lyman, an analyst at 451 Research.
The Shippable acquisition also expands JFrog's presence and reach in containers and cloud-native software, given that Shippable's software development assembly line is built on containers, Lyman said. In addition, the vendors also align in their support for on-premises, cloud and hybrid cloud deployments, which matches how enterprises prefer to run their DevOps workflows.
"One of the missing pieces in our platform was a tool for automation," said Shlomi Ben Haim, CEO at JFrog. "We wanted a CI/CD automation tool that was already set for the next-generation technologies, such as Kubernetes, Helm and other cloud-native technologies."
Haim declined to disclose the value of the deal.
Shlomi Ben Haim
Experts pointed to the fact that the market was already saturated with small startups and open source [tools] that provide CI/CD capabilities. "The net effect has been a series of acquisitions of CI/CD providers," said Jim Mercer, an analyst at IDC, in Framingham, Mass.
Some recent examples are Idera's purchase of Travis CI in January, CloudBees acquisition of Codeship in February 2018 and Oracle's Wercker buy in April 2017. JFrog's addition of Shippable gives its customers and prospects a DevOps suite that provides an alternative to being locked into cloud provider tool sets, Mercer said.
Integration into JFrog
Shippable will be integrated into the JFrog Enterprise+ platform -- a product suite that includes all of JFrog's products for an unlimited number of users, and the highest level of support. Pricing for this plan is not public, but the JFrog Artifactory Enterprise plan pricing -- one level down from Enterprise+ -- costs $29,500 per year, according to the company's website.
Shippable integration will come in two steps, Haim said. First will be a full integration with all the JFrog stand-alone tools, set for the second quarter of this year. The second step will be full integration into the overall JFrog platform to provide one unified UI by year end.
With this move, JFrog adds Shippable's CI/CD and DevOps automation, which has evolved with cloud-native software such as containers and Kubernetes.
Jay Lymananalyst, 451 Research
While specializing in CI/CD, Shippable also integrates disparate DevOps toolchains into unified code assembly lines. JFrog's support for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud deployments, along with its high availability features, help to differentiate the company from some of its competitors, Haim said.
The acquisition also provides some potential integration opportunities for JFrog. The company's product line includes Artifactory, an artifact repository; Bintray, a distribution program; Xray, a DevSecOps tool for continuous security and artifact analysis; and Insight, a dashboard, among other products.
Shippable's integration with JFrog Insight could provide valuable metrics and analytics across the entire DevOps pipeline, IDC's Mercer said. Xray integration might provide opportunities to expand the reach of security, compliance and vulnerability scanning further to the left side of the DevOps pipeline. This could ensure insecure code is caught earlier in the process.
"Further, Shippable's assembly lines technology could be used to optimize the integration of all the tools that make up JFrog's Enterprise+ offering into a more seamless DevOps [platform]," Mercer added.
Last month, JFrog inked a partnership with Risk Based Security (RBS) to integrate its security capabilities with Xray. RBS sells VulnDB vulnerability intelligence, including a knowledge base of more than 194,000 unique vulnerabilities. With Shippable, it can provide faster and more automated pipelines.
Shippable customers can continue to use the service, with deeper integration and access to JFrog's portfolio.
"We are seeing that as DevOps processes are adopted by enterprise organizations, there is an increasing demand for more comprehensive suites of DevOps tools, and managing a plethora of point solutions is untenable," Mercer said.
Shlomi Ben Haim
