Overview of CI/CD Software from Software Procurement Experts

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What is continuous integration & continuous delivery (CI/CD)?

CI/CD is a software development practice focused on improving and streamlining development workflows and optimizing processes throughout the software development lifecycle. While it’s possible to manually execute each step of a CI/CD pipeline, many modern organizations, developers, and IT operations teams take an automation-driven approach to DevOps, which includes CI/CD. 

DevOps combines the development and operations aspects of the software development lifecycle in order to improve and shorten the time to market through real-time collaboration and joint responsibility. The CI/CD process is automated as part of this methodology, with the build-and-test steps of the development process triggered by CI. Once tested and proven to be reliable, the new code is merged with the repository and delivered seamlessly as part of the CD process. 

With an automated CI/CD process, organizations can release software faster than ever before by continuously delivering incremental code updates and changes into production. It’s the most efficient method for ensuring your company’s software has a continuous flow of new features and bug fixes without risking software downtime.

Most Purchased CI/CD Software

According to Vendr's purchasing data, Atlassian leads the pack as the most purchased software in the CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) software category, with an average contract value of $71.26K. Atlassian's prominence in this field is reflective of its broad suite of tools that facilitate efficient automation, integration, and deployment processes for development teams.

PagerDuty follows as the second most acquired software, showcasing its operational efficiency with an average contract value of $78.36K. Their incident response platform is vital for businesses needing real-time operations alerts and on-call scheduling.

HashiCorp claims the third spot with an impressive average contract value of $173.42K, highlighting their specialized tools for provisioning, securing, connecting, and running any infrastructure for any application.

JetBrains, known for its suite of development and collaboration tools, takes fourth place with an average contract value of $25.82K, signifying its staple presence in development environments.

Rounding out the top five, JFrog's platform, with an average contract value of $55.61K, provides robust solutions for artifact management and distribution, which are crucial for streamlined and secure software releases.

Most Renewed CI/CD Software

Atlassian tops the list as the most renewed software within the CI/CD Software category, emphasizing its enduring relationship with clients through an average renewal value of $76.21K. This figure signifies user satisfaction and the continuous integration of Atlassian's tools into daily development workflows.

PagerDuty stands strong in the second position with an average renewal value of $79.95K, indicating its critical role in operational reliability and the high trust placed in its incident management capabilities.

JetBrains holds the third rank with an average renewal value of $26.94K, reflective of the steady demand for its integrated development environments that support a wide array of programming languages and frameworks.

JFrog comes in fourth, securing renewals with an average value of $60.91K, showcasing the value that users find in its artifact repository and binary management for automated software pipelines.

HashiCorp, in fifth place with an average renewal value of $214.28K, represents a significant commitment from users to its infrastructure automation products that enable developers to manage the lifecycle of their applications efficiently.

Most Recently Purchased CI/CD Software

Atlassian reinforces its dominance across all categories within the CI/CD Software space, clinching the title of the most recently purchased software. With an average new purchase value of $42.51K, Atlassian's consistent innovation and comprehensive product suite resonate with businesses looking to enhance their development pipeline.

PagerDuty follows suit, securing the second-highest number of new purchases and an average new purchase value of $61.33K, indicative of its effectiveness in operational alerting and incident response that appeals to modern DevOps teams.

HashiCorp takes the third spot, with new purchases valuing an average of $57.65K, underscoring the growing demand for their scalable infrastructure automation tools that streamline provisioning, security, and networking across applications.

JFrog, ranking fourth, shows an average new purchase value of $30.16K, reflecting its solid foundation in the market as a provider of artifact management solutions essential for reliable software releases.

JetBrains completes the list as the fifth most recently purchased, with an average value of $8.03K, highlighting their role in supporting software developers with versatile and powerful tooling for code development and continuous integration workflows. Their presence emphasizes the significance of robust development environments in modern software production.

What is CI/CD software?

CI/CD software refers to tools that are designed to streamline the software development process by providing a highly collaborative environment for developers and IT operations teams. Adopting continuous integration and delivery tools gets your new software to market quickly with a lower chance of bugs or errors compared to manually executed iterative software lifecycles. 

With the help of CI/CD tools, your development team can automate the repetitive build process, along with the testing and delivery/deployment processes, giving developers the freedom to focus on more strategic and creative aspects of software development. 

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Who can benefit from using CI/CD software?

CI/CD software is useful for any organization that prioritizes software development as a central aspect of its operations (e.g., SaaS companies). By automating time-consuming build, test, and deploy processes, CI/CD software increases development efficiency, improves software quality, and reduces potential deployment risks. 

Some of the primary users that stand to benefit the most from CI/CD software include developers, DevOps engineers, IT operations teams, quality assurance teams, and project managers. However, if an organization has many legacy IT systems, an outdated tech stack, or practices very infrequent release cycles, it may not be able to realize the full potential of CI/CD tools.  

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Features to look for in CI/CD software 

When considering continuous integration and delivery software for your organization, prioritize the following essential features:

• Integration with version control systems: Seamless integration with popular version control systems such as Git, GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket enables developers to easily manage code changes. 
• Automated testing capabilities: CI/CD software should support automated testing frameworks, allowing developers to run unit tests, integration tests, and end-to-end tests to ensure code quality and detect any issues early in the development process. 
• Scalability and performance: As your codebase and number of team members expand, you’ll need a CI/CD software solution that can scale with your evolving development needs and facilitate efficient resource utilization to maintain your build and delivery timelines. 
• Security and compliance: Another vital aspect of CI/CD software is adherence to industry standards for security and compliance that are designed to protect your codebase, sensitive data, and production environments throughout the software development life cycle. 
• Flexibility and customization: It’s a good idea to choose CI/CD software with customizable workflows that allow your team to tailor automated processes to the organization’s specific requirements, development practices, and existing tools and technologies. 

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Considerations for choosing the right CI/CD software 

In addition to the features mentioned above, these are some of the other technical, cultural, and economic considerations to take into account when evaluating CI/CD software: 

• Compatibility with your tech stack: CI/CD software needs to support your organization’s existing programming languages and IT infrastructure, as developers want minimal disruption to their current toolset and ways of working. 
• Ease of use and adoption: The best continuous delivery tools are user-friendly with intuitive interfaces, including comprehensive documentation and built-in tutorials to facilitate quick adoption.  
• Deployment options: CI/CD software can either be deployed on-premises or as an on-demand, cloud-based solution. You’ll need to determine which deployment option is best for your organization’s IT requirements, security policies, and infrastructure constraints. 
• Community support and ecosystem: Valuable for any software system, consider the availability of tutorials, forums, and other community resources. You’ll also want to look for the availability of third-party integrations, plugins, APIs, and extensions to extend the CI/CD tool’s functionality and integrative capabilities with your existing tools and development workflows. 
• Cost and pricing model: CI/CD software has varying pricing structures which may include licensing fees, subscription plans based on usage or team size, and additional costs for maintenance and support. Take both short- and long-term cost factors in accounting when choosing your software. 

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CI/CD software FAQs 

What are the benefits of using CI/CD software?

Implementing CI/CD software offers businesses several benefits, including: 

• Faster time-to-market: CI/CD software helps organizations deliver software updates quickly and efficiently, accelerating time-to-market for new features, bug patches, and other software improvements. 
• Improved code quality and reliability: Automated testing processes and continuous integration of new code catch errors in each software iteration early on in the development lifecycle, reducing the risk of bad code going into production. 
• Enhanced collaboration: CI/CD as a development practice is the backbone of a DevOps methodology that brings developers and IT operations teams together to increase the speed of software deployment. 
• Improved efficiency: By automating and streamlining tasks related to building, testing, and deploying software, developers can focus on the creative and strategic aspects of software development that require “a human touch.” As a result, overall productivity and efficiency will increase. 

Which businesses need CI/CD software?

Any business that relies on software development as a core business operation will benefit from CI/CD software.  Some of the most common businesses that take advantage of these tools include software development and SaaS companies, tech startups, media and entertainment businesses, e-commerce websites, and enterprises with software that requires continuous updates and maintenance. 

How much does CI/CD software cost?

Price ranges are based on factors including the number of users, the level of maintenance and software support your organization needs, and the amount of storage and computing resources your business requires.