Shippable DevOps Platform Uses Containers to “Automate Everything”

Containers may still be maturing. But Shippable, a DevOps provider, is already taking a big bet on Docker containers by making them the center of the latest version of its developer productivity platform, which is out this week.

Shippable’s pitch to developers is “automate everything.” It promises a platform that lets DevOps teams move from development to testing to production quickly and seamlessly.

On its face, that value proposition may not sound especially unique. Lots of DevOps providers promise end-to-end solutions. That’s the whole point of DevOps, after all.

But Shippable stands out as a vendor that has placed containers at the very center of its DevOps solution. By leveraging containers, the company says, it is able to provide a level of portability and flexibility that exceeds that of traditional DevOps platforms.

“Shippable’s new platform is the only end-to-end pipeline for containerized applications in a space full of tools that only solve part of the delivery workflow problem,” the company said in an announcement of the latest version of its platform, which debuted Feb. 29.

In particular, Shippable says it leverages containers to deliver the following features in the newest release of its platform:

  • Ability to move apps between clouds, and run them across public, private or hybrid environments, without writing infrastructure-specific code.
  • Container-based build environments that can be easily isolated from one another and from the production environment.
  • Portable build environments that can run behind firewalls or on private clouds, as desired, to meet security and compliance needs.
  • Integration with all the major public cloud platforms, container registries and source control platforms (GitHub, GitHub Enterprise, Bitbucket, Docker, Google GCR, Amazon ECR, Amazon ECS and Elastic Beanstalk, Google GKE, Microsoft Azure).

In its latest version, Shippable’s platform also offers support for running Docker commands and controlling Docker components directly. In a sense, that support gives users the best of both worlds — they can let Shippable automate DevOps for them, but they also have access to the underlying container infrastructure when they want it.

Again, many of Shippable’s end-user features, while competitive, are not unique from a functionality standpoint. But because the company delivers everything using containers, it is pushing the envelope in this space. It stands out as one of the first DevOps providers to leverage a fully container-centric platform that doesn’t require users to engage with the underlying container infrastructure — unless they want to, in which case they can easily do so.

So far, analysts seem to like what they see. “Solving the integration of DevOps toolchains from development through deployment through policy-driven automation is one of the most pressing needs in DevOps today,” said Steve Hendrick, principal analyst for application development and deployment research at ESG. “Shippable is addressing exactly this issue thereby eliminating the brittle infrastructure-dependent scripting that is in use today. The result is a DevOps pipeline that is more application-centric, easier to manage, and adaptable to whatever tools and infrastructure an enterprise is using.”

Shippable also has a sizable customer base. The company, which was founded in 2013, says users of its continuous integration platform include 8,000 organizations and 50,000 individual developers.

Shippable’s new, container-based platform is now generally available. It’s based on a freemium pricing model, with a single build minion and deployment pipeline available free of cost, and additional features starting at $10/month.

Christopher Tozzi

Christopher Tozzi has covered technology and business news for nearly a decade, specializing in open source, containers, big data, networking and security. He is currently Senior Editor and DevOps Analyst with Fixate.io and Sweetcode.io.

Christopher Tozzi has 254 posts and counting. See all posts by Christopher Tozzi

One thought on “Shippable DevOps Platform Uses Containers to “Automate Everything”

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