DevOps was once IT's wild frontier—a frontier where innovation, speed, and intelligent automation separated companies. Ironically, DevOps has been so good at standardizing and automating application delivery that it's now facing the problem of its own success. With years of rapid growth and change, the market is now cannibalizing itself. The very processes and methodologies that made DevOps unique are becoming so common, so interchangeable, that one can't tell them apart. To put it simply, DevOps has "sawed off the branch it was sitting on."
Let's take apart what went wrong, what are the warning signs, and what does this portend for the future.
1. Standardization Everywhere
DevOps’ Greatest Hits—Now on Every Corner
DevOps in the past was all about building your own workflows and toolchains. Today, everyone's leveraging the same toolset—GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes. These are the "greatest hits" of DevOps now, and they are everywhere. The workflow is so standardized that there are tutorials available for nearly every setup online.
This standardization was the aim, but it's commoditized DevOps tools too. If everyone's using it, it's hard to be different.
AI and Automation: The Great Leveler
AI has hastened this process. What was worth taking a skilled DevOps engineer up to the level of doing manually is now automated or generatable with AI. Need a CI/CD pipeline? There's a bot for that. The more we automate, the less room there is to fit individual skill.
2. Price Wars and “Good Enough” Solutions
When Price Becomes King
As interchangeable equipment finds its way into the market, companies start choosing based on price, not functionality. Why pay extra for an expensive tool when a cheaper one will do equally well? Open-source and freemium models have pushed prices even further down. Vendors are trapped competing on price, not innovation.
Open Source: The Double-Edged Sword
Open-source DevOps tools are everywhere, and while great for consumers, they complicate vendors' ability to make money. The only solution is to offer extra services or support, but third parties are also offering those.
3. Big Fish Eat Little Fish
Consolidation and Ecosystems
As competition heats up, big fish gobble up little ones. IBM bought Red Hat, Microsoft bought GitHub, and others. These giants like to trap customers into their ecosystems with integrated platforms that are hard to leave.
Platform Bundling
Getting all your DevOps needs from one vendor is easier than ever, but this convenience comes at a cost: you’re stuck with whatever that vendor offers, and innovation slows down.
4. Less Innovation, More Imitation
The diagram of the day: The Feature Checklist Game
Everybody provides the same features, so new releases are all about tweaking details rather than breakthroughs. Vendors are hectic making their UIs pretty or their integrations seamless, but true innovation is in short supply.
Stagnation Sets In
Patent filings and new major features are on the decline. The market is starting to look like the database wars' late days—everybody's copying everybody else.
5. Easy Switching, Weak Loyalty
Interoperability Means Less Lock-In
Industry standards and open APIs make it simple to switch from a competitive tool. Convenient for the user, hard on vendors who wish to maintain loyalty.
User Experience as the Last Stand
With the feature set more or less the same, vendors now fight on user experience. But even that is easy to copy. If one product introduces a nice new workflow, others copy it in months.
6. Globalization and the Race to the Bottom
Global Talent Pools
DevOps skills have become so commoditized that companies can source talent from any corner of the globe. That reduces costs but also differentiation.
Failed Attempts at Specialization
Some vendors tried to develop industry-specific DevOps software, but most customers desire flexible, cross-industry platforms. Vertical solutions just haven't caught on.
Moral: DevOps Cut Off Its Own Branch
DevOps was designed to release software more quickly, more easily, and with greater reliability. It worked—so well, in fact, that it made itself bland. The tools and practices that were competitive differentiators are today table stakes. In attempting to make everything smooth and consistent, DevOps "cut off the branch it was sitting on." Today'smarketplace is flooded with competing tools that are practicallyindistinguishable from each other.
What's Next?
For companies, the lesson is straightforward: Use commoditized software to reduce costs and invest your time in building differentiated processes or products that can't readily be copied by others. For suppliers, the challenge is how to build new value, whether through integration, AI, or something yet undiscovered.
DevOps changed the world by making IT great for everyone. Now, it has to reinvent itself—or else it will become just another utility whirring in the background.
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The Article was reviewed by Hleb Skuratau, CEO and CTO at T4itech.
Hleb Skuratau
Elizaveta Sokolova