The DevOps Enterprise Summit San Francisco Was Everything We Hoped For and More!

We (Catapult PR) just returned from an action-packed three days at the 2016 DevOps Enterprise Summit San Francisco (DOES16) where 1,300 DevOps luminaries, business leaders and practitioners united to unpack current DevOps trends and predictions, share success stories and collaborate for the betterment of Dev and Ops practices at large, complex organizations. The conference featured a jam-packed schedule including speakers from some of the world’s biggest brands, such as Target, Verizon and Disney, who shared their personal trials, triumphs and observations of leading an organization through a DevOps transformation. It is clear that the excitement and adoption of DevOps continues to grow and transform IT operations as more businesses become determined to win markets in today’s competitive landscape.

In the opening remarks, author & DevOps visionary, Gene Kim, along with Steve Brodie, CEO of Electric Cloud, took the stage to welcome the crowd. We chuckled as they walked onstage to tune of the 90’s hit “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” by TLC (get it? J). Kim presented stats from the 2016 State of DevOps report to demonstrate the power and impact DevOps has on organizations, including: 200x more frequent deployments, 2,555x shorter change deployment lead times, 50 percent less time remediating security issues, and 2.2X more likely that employees will recommend their organization as a great place to work. This set the tone for a collaborative and productive event to help companies at every stage of the DevOps journey identify and amplify the best practices happening in IT and software delivery. He reminded us that the majority of technology workers are at the large, complex organizations – or the “horses” – and that DevOps is absolutely “for” them.

Strategic Narrative

Throughout the conference we heard big transformation stories from leaders of companies like Allstate Insurance, American Airlines, Capital One, Microsoft and more. As we are grateful and fortunate to be the PR agency of record for the conference, we had the opportunity to sit in on presentations featuring some of the most influential and innovative minds in DevOps. After listening to the dozens of experience reports, case studies and technical how-to’s, we noticed a few topics and themes stood out, including: containers and microservices, automation, information security and transformational leadership. These topics will continue to shape the state of DevOps and software delivery techniques in 2017 and beyond.

The conference also made a big splash online – especially on social media where the hashtag #DOES16 was trending locally in a matter of hours. Here are some of our favorite tweets and media tidbits from DOES:

#does16 @_opalperry: “In leadership, our job is to create the courage for people to do the right thing

— Gene Kim (@RealGeneKim) November 8, 2016

We are at our best when we are helping each other, when we are serving each other, when we help this world together @jasonacox #does16 👏🏻👏🏻 pic.twitter.com/zZG9pyWtD5

— DevOps Enterprise (@DOESsummit) November 10, 2016

Great points – my head hurts already from agreement nodding #does16 pic.twitter.com/eczPce9EnS

— Kevin Behr (@kevinbehr) November 8, 2016

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RT @SteefelS: Microsoft just stated they are moving *all* of VSTS code to start using GIT for their repo#does16 pic.twitter.com/69VFBv1FYJ

— Gene Kim (@RealGeneKim) November 8, 2016

“If developers aren’t involved in test automation, they won’t write testable code” @jezhumble #does16 #DevOps

— DevOps Enterprise (@DOESsummit) November 9, 2016

From Beth Pariseau’s article in TechTarget, “A period of upheaval following a company spinoff or merger may not seem like a great time to establish DevOps best practices, but for two large enterprises such crises were exactly what drove their DevOps transformations.”
This article from Mirco Hering, a DOES16 London speaker, sharing his thoughts and takeaways from the San Francisco event.
From Gene Kim in TechBeacon: “For large, complex organizations who’ve been around for decades or longer, we’re seeing evidence that they’re increasingly adopting DevOps principles and practices at scale, ensuring that development, operations, and information security engineers can be as productive as if they were working at a Google, Amazon, Netflix, or Facebook.”
And, this article from Alan Shimel at DevOps.com featuring a podcast with Gene Kim discussing The DevOps Handbook and his excitement for DOES.
Above all, DOES16 was inspiring. We saw a lot of companies energized and ready to overcome any challenges, in order to drive tangible, organizational transformation results. If you missed out on this awesome event, we encourage you to watch the recorded presentations being posted by IT Revolution and to also watch the post-talk interviews with Alan Shimel from DevOps.com.

If you are interested in attending DevOps Enterprise Summit 2017 in London or San Francisco, be sure to watch for more details coming soon!

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