DevOps was the wild west of IT—a wild west which experienced innovation, speed, and intelligent automation as differentiators for companies. Ironically, DevOps has been so successful at standardizing and automating application delivery that it's now dealing with the consequence of its own success. After years of hyper-growth and transformation, the market is cannibalizing itself. The same processes and practices that set DevOps apart are becoming so prevalent, so ubiquitous, that it is impossible to differentiate them anymore. That is, DevOps has "sawed off the branch it was sitting on."
Let's dissect what was wrong, what the warning signs were, and what it means for the future.
1. Standardization Everywhere
DevOps’ Greatest Hits—Now on Every Corner
DevOps' Greatest Hits—Now on Every Corner
DevOps was once all about building your own toolchains and workflows. Now everyone's utilizing the same toolset—GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes. Those are today's "greatest hits" of DevOps, and they're everywhere. The workflow's so standardized that there are tutorials for nearly every configuration on the internet.
This standardization was the aim, but it's commoditized DevOps tools as a result, too. Everyone's using it, so it's hard to be different.
AI and Automation: The Great Leveler
AI hastened this process. Whatever needs to be spent in terms of the quality of a good DevOps person's skill doing it manually is now automatable or AI-able to generate. Need a CI/CD pipeline? There's a bot for that. The more we automate, the less there is room to incorporate the skill of the person.
2. Price Wars and “Good Enough” Solutions
When Price Becomes King
As commodity gear finds its way into the market, companies start choosing based on price, not functionality. Why pay more for an expensive tool when a cheaper one will do the job just as effectively? Open-source and freemium offerings have pushed prices down even further. Vendors find themselves 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
It's simpler than ever before to obtain all of your DevOps needs from one supplier, but the convenience comes at the cost of being locked in with whatever they provide and sluggish innovation.
4. Less Innovation, More Imitation
The diagram of the day: The Feature Checklist Game
Everyone does the same, so new releases are less a matter of revolution and more a matter of messing around with details. Sellers are working on making their UIs adorable or their integrations sleek, but real innovation is minimal.
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 functionality set almost the same, vendors now compete on user experience. But that too is easy to imitate. If a product introduces a nice new process, others copy it in months.
6. Globalization and the Race to the Bottom
Global Talent Pools
DevOps skills are commoditized to the extent that companies can buy expertise from anywhere in the globe. This reduces cost 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 invented to produce software quickly, more easily, and with greater certainty. It worked—so effectively, in fact, that it commoditized itself. The practices and tools that were once competitive differentiators are now table stakes. In an attempt to make everything slick and homogeneous, DevOps "cut off the branch it was sitting on." Today's marketplace is filled with competing tools that are almost identical to each other.
What's Next?
For companies, the message is clear: Leverage commoditized software to save money and invest your time creating differentiated processes or products that others can't easily copy. For suppliers, the challenge is how to generate new value through integration, AI, or something else yet to be discovered.
DevOps changed the world by making IT great for all. Now, it has to reimagine itself—if it doesn't, then it becomes another utility buzzing in the background.
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The Article was reviewed by Hleb Skuratau, CEO and CTO at T4itech.
Hleb Skuratau
Elizaveta Sokolova
Juliya Moshkareva