IBM announced new Bluemix services that simplify and speed app development in the cloud. With these new services, developers can now easily access and construct pre-configured toolchains using popular DevOps tools, including GitHub and Slack. 

 

Toolchains, an integrated set of DevOps tools that support app development, deployment and operations tasks, are integral to the app development process. However, because they are typically comprised of a variety of tools from multiple vendors and open source solutions, the integration, maintenance and deployment of these toolchains can be an arduous task that often takes development teams days and even weeks to complete. 



To address this challenge, IBM Bluemix Continuous Delivery provides DevOps teams with a central hub to quickly create, manage and scale toolchains. In addition, the Delivery Pipeline service automates builds, tests and deployments and can detect issues before applications go live, saving developers time and effort.

 

The new service also provides toolchain templates that can be provisioned enterprise-wide with a few mouse clicks. This makes it faster and easier to scale toolchains and reduces cost for DevOps solutions. Templates already available include toolchains to help build microservices, containers or cloud-native applications, with integrations to popular solutions such as GitHub, Slack, PagerDuty and Sauce Labs. 



"Millions of developers use GitHub to build personal projects, support their businesses, and work together on open source technologies," said GitHub's Todd Berman, VP of Engineering. “GitHub is a powerful addition to IBM’s Bluemix Continuous Delivery service that builds on our strategic partnership to dramatically advance the development of next-generation cloud applications for enterprise customers.” 



By giving an organization the ability to create and share custom toolchain templates across their business, IBM Bluemix Continuous Delivery helps automate a wide variety of common DevOps tasks for a range of application types, saving developers from having to create new toolchains for each project. 

In addition to integration with popular tools like GitHub, PagerDuty, Sauce Labs and Slack, Bluemix Continuous Delivery taps into IBM’s new Availability Monitoring service to ensure applications are always available and meeting user expectations as developers roll out updates. This service runs simulated user tests from around the world, 24/7, to detect problems in web applications and REST architecture APIs. When integrated into toolchains, it provides quick insights to the root causes of problems so teams can make sure their applications are always running properly.

 

DevOps users can also benefit from the IBM and Slack partnership announced in October to bring Watson to Slack’s global community of developers and enterprise users.  IBM and Slack intend to develop new and improved communications tools for users of the Slack platform, including an updated Slackbot to be powered by Watson, and an IBM Watson-enabled bot for IT and network operational incidents, so enterprise devops teams can more efficiently identify, address and fix these issues. 

“One of the biggest challenges developers face in today’s cloud-led world is quickly building and deploying applications to stay competitive,” said Dave Lindquist, IBM Fellow and Vice President of Development, IBM Cloud DevOps and Analytics. “With the introduction of Bluemix Continuous Delivery, developers can not only rapidly create, integrate and share DevOps toolchains using their favorite tools, but also quickly add powerful new services like cognitive computing with Watson or data and analytics services from The Weather Company." 

 

Bluemix, IBM’s cloud platform, has grown rapidly to become one of the largest open, public cloud deployments in the world. Based in open standards, it features over 150 advanced technologies and services, including cognitive computing, blockchain, Internet of Things, cloud data services, DevOps and security.