JFrog announced today it is making a free tier of its namesake DevOps platform available on all three major public cloud service providers.
Stephen Chin, senior director for developer relations at JFrog, said a free subscription to JFrog Platform running on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is now generally available across 18 cloud regions. DevOps teams are provided with up to 2GB of storage, 10GB of monthly data transfer and 2,000 CI/CD pipeline minutes per month free of charge.
The subscription spans JFrog Artifactory, an integrated software package management tool for binaries and container registry; JFrog Xray, a vulnerability scanning tool; and JFrog Pipelines, a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform.
Chin said the best way to further DevOps adoption is always going to be to make it as easy as possible to get started. There is no substitute for hands-on experience, he said.
Fresh off raising additional capital via an initial public offering (IPO), JFrog is looking to expand its customer base. JFrog has more than 5,800 customers currently. The free tier will make it easier for JFrog to achieve that goal in a way that allows a nascent DevOps team to upgrade to a paid tier as their project scales, he said.
It’s not clear to what degree organizations that have already embraced DevOps might be willing to replace their CI/CD platform or, in some cases, consolidate the multiple CI/CD platforms they already employ. However, as the number of organizations that are embracing best DevOps practices continues to grow, there appears to be plenty of opportunity for providers of CI/CD platforms to expand as organizations move to accelerate various digital business transformation initiatives in the wake of the economic downturn brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Less clear as the competition among DevOps platform providers heats up is the degree to which the total cost of DevOps could decline. Most IT organizations are under more pressure than ever to contain costs even as they are being required to accelerate software development. The challenge is striking a balance between open source tools and platforms that IT teams need to deploy and support versus relying on DevOps platforms that are managed on their behalf. In theory, the fewer IT staff dedicated to managing infrastructure, the more money there is to hire developers.
DevOps adoption historically has been driven from the bottom up within most organizations. However, as more organizations appreciate the importance of software within their organization, senior IT and business leaders are revisiting software development processes. As part of those efforts, more organizations are looking to standardize on a specific set of DevOps platforms across their entire organization regardless of what cloud platform they may be deployed on.
The challenge, is as often the case with any journey, is making that first step.
