Comments on: Continuous Integration Doom and Gloom?

By: Slava Imeshev

Slava Imeshev — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:05:29 +0000

Our Parabuild the build and release management system. It is one of the oldest enterprise CI servers and is alive and kicking.

By: Top Posts for 2009

Top Posts for 2009 — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:43:51 +0000

[...] was Continuous Integration Doom and Gloom? It’ll be interesting to see what the winter holds. Everyone still seems to be in the [...]

By: Julian Simpson

Julian Simpson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:48:12 +0000

Hi Banos,

I think there will be a little gloom for those companies who leave the CI marketplace. And that’s never good for us as consumers (unless you’re like me takes 30 minutes to choose toothpaste because they get torn between sensitive teeth tartar removing added bicarb toothpaste, and extra cleansing liquid gel gum strengthening toothpaste).

I was also wondering about the size of the market. I like to think it’ll grow. Then I wonder if some people will ever write unit tests or use CI.

By: Banos

Banos — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:16:47 +0000

Dunno why this article is titled Doom and Gloom! Doom for some CI tools I suppose. but not Gloom for us ‘consumers’ the the evolution and maturation of CI in the enterprise is a good thing.
Its interesting to see some round ups and preditions for the market. Funnily enough I’m looking around in the space now for next step decisions. So all the views in here are interesting.
There have been a few posts in the CruiseControl mail list recently that have been a bit doom and gloom interestingly enough… maybe time to subscribe elsewhere too and look up out of the trenches…

By: Dax Farhang

Dax Farhang — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:21:51 +0000

Great write ups by both, particularly the distinction between workgroup vs. enterprise and the notion that Microsoft will continue to make a play at any enterprise market that is worthwhile. There are two key characteristics of the enterprise which are worthwhile to note - they often do not have homogeneous .NET, Java or native codebases, nor do they have consistent tool sets or development processes across their many workgroups. We at Electric Cloud focus on providing optimal value to these types of enterprises who are looking for a flexible solution to fit their complex needs.

By: Alex Honor

Alex Honor — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:39:21 +0000

Great right up.
I also agree on the rough market segmentation model (i.e., team vs enterprise). Tool choices made at the team level are often inexpensive or free because it’s difficult to justify big purchases based on productivity gains at that level of the organization.
I also agree that the market is still pretty new and it is premature to assume it’s going to consolidate any time soon. I agree with the comment Eric Minick makes re: enterprise model products, wherein you include other roles in the product’s feature set. These features may make the product more complex giving it a tougher learning curve. Their flexibility or wider scope does pay off given the right scale though.

By: simpsonjulian

simpsonjulian — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 22:33:45 +0000

Andrew – thanks for writing an interesting article! There were some bets (in the pub ) about the industry made at last year’s CITCON Europe. They’ll be cashed in in August. It’ll be fascinating to revisit one year’s worth of change, let alone more.

By: Andrew Binstock

Andrew Binstock — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:46:31 +0000

Thanks for the kind words about my write-up. This will be an interesting technology sector to watch develop.

By: simpsonjulian

simpsonjulian — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:59:04 +0000

Eric – thanks for your correction. Quite right, your post was about the differences in CI tools and I have updated my post to reflect that.

By: Eric Minick

Eric Minick — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:07:28 +0000

Actually, us Anthillers aren’t commenting on (or weren’t trying to comment on) how the market will shake out. We do think the basic Enterprise vs Work-Group distinction he makes is accurate though.

We don’t compete against Hudson or CruiseControl or other team level CI tools. If those meet (or almost meet your needs) it’s hard to justify an enterprise solution when budgets are tight. For that matter, team level tools often meet the developer’s needs.

Where Enterprise tools differ is their focus on the release manager, deployment engineer, SCM guy and QA manager. The developer is just one of many people who need to be served. When the scope of challenges impacts this larger audience, or their are extremely difficult build problems, Enterprise CI tools like AnthillPro have a bigger role.