I read an insightful article this morning from Bernard Golden on DZone discussing the DevOps conundrum facing many enterprises today – is it better to build your own DevOps tools or go commercial? For Golden, the question arose from his observations at a number of DevOps Days events he has attended, where typically the audience is composed of startup professionals:
“I have to say, though, that a typical feature of most presentations is a recitation of the various open source products and components and how they integrated them to implement their solution. In a word, how they created their home-grown solution. Given that many of these speakers hail from startups with small teams and a focus on conserving cash, this approach makes sense. Moreover, given that these are typically small teams working at companies following the Lean Startup approach, using open source that allows rapid change as circumstances dictate makes sense as well. And, in any case, startups need to solve problems today because who knows what the future will bring?”