If you’ve spent time on the site, you already know that GitLab is The DevOps Platform, a single-application solution that is radically different than DIY DevOps toolchains. Have questions? Great — because we have answers, and we’d love to chat. But let’s address the most important question of all right here: “What’s in it for me?” Our approach is objectively different from other solution providers, but why should you care?
It’s a valid question, and one you should feel comfortable asking any solution provider. You don’t trade your station wagon for a Ferrari for looks, you get the Ferrari because it wins races. In our case, The DevOps Platform will absolutely make you better at “doing DevOps.” You can simplify your infrastructure like Glympse, which consolidated 20 tools into one. You can speed your delivery like Goldman Sachs, which increased deployments from two per month to 1,000 per day. You can run security scans concurrently with development like Chorus. These are all substantial improvements that can generate real ROI right away while improving quality of life for your employees. On its own, that’s fantastic — but incremental gains are just the start of the journey.
Ultimately, the point of The DevOps Platform isn’t doing DevOps better; it’s transforming your business and improving agility.
That’s a pretty bold statement.
Quite, but it’s also true. We don’t want to improve DevOps outputs. We want to help you realize business outcomes.
DevOps broke down silos between Development and Operations, ramping efficiency and velocity, but did that ultimately make businesses more profitable or innovate? Frequently, no, because the blocker to value creation just moved somewhere else — like Security, Product or Compliance. You can deploy 100x per day, but if a weeks-long audit process stands between any build and your customer, those efficiency gains might not matter. That’s where The DevOps Platform shines. As a single source of truth with a single data store, it provides visibility and context to every stakeholder in the company, whether they’re a Developer, Designer, Auditor, Security Professional or anyone else with a part to play.
Got it. It’s about collaboration.
Absolutely. Our mission statement is “Everyone can contribute” because collaboration equals innovation. But you can’t just throw a wiki or a ticketing system at a problem and call it fixed. Contextual collaboration matters. If I’m a product owner and development is blocked or a security pro who sees that a known vulnerability wasn’t remediated, I need to know why, when and by whom. If you aren’t collaborating inside the system of work with real-time data, you’re probably missing critical context, which leads to poor decisions and, ultimately, less value in the hands of customers. When every company is a software company, every member of the business needs to be involved with and understand some aspect of software delivery.
So, now we’re talking about DevSecProductDesignFinanceAuditOps?
Sure. But that’s a mouthful. Let’s just call it “agile business” because that’s really what The DevOps Platform gives you in the end. We’re extending the benefits of DevOps to a broader range of roles to remove those blockers at the edges of the process. This allows your whole organization to engage in and reap the rewards of agile thinking. And that brings us back to transformation. A platform is what’s been missing from so many Digital Transformation initiatives over the years, and a big reason why, even though businesses have gained efficiencies here and there, the primary goal of doing big things differently has been so hard to reach.
No software solution — not even GitlLab — can do the work for you, but that’s OK. You already know how to run your business. You have ideas and talent. You just need the software behind your software to get out of your way and support your business as you innovate. If you’ve already invested in transformation initiatives, The DevOps Platform can unlock the value of those investments. If you’re just getting started, it can help you scale your innovation immediately. To see how The DevOps Platform can work for you, try GitLab Ultimate for free.
