No single software vendor can give you all the DevOps tools you need. For this reason, it’s essential to build the right technology stack that makes sense for your team and project.
While using the right DevOps tools can make all the difference between making rapid progress and being caught in an infinite loop of setbacks and delays, there’s one more element that is crucial to successful teamwork: having the right integration platform to connect all your software tools. This means, connecting all the tools your DevOps teams are using between each other, but also aligning DevOps with all other systems and applications.
Because let’s face it: DevOps doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In most large companies, development teams interact with other teams and departments daily, and being able to exchange data effortlessly is crucial.
For this reason, it’s essential to align DevOps with ITSM, CRM, and monitoring, and connect all tools automatically. ZigiOps is a powerful no-code integration platform that lets you do just that: connect all the programs you’re using and let them speak to one another automatically.
Let’s now look at the top 10 tools DevOps teams will be using in 2022, and how you can integrate them in your software ecosystem.
- JIRA
Jira Software remains one of the most widely used software development tools that Agile teams use. It allows them to plan, track and release software efficiently, by creating user stories, issues, and tasks, and using its reporting features. It also features scrum and kanban boards (which are central for Agile development) that dev teams can start using right away.
With it, teams can plan their sprints, prioritize issues, and either define their own workflows or use Jira’s out-of-the-box workflows to manage projects.
Jira Software is often used together with ITSM tools, such as Jira Service Management, ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, or Cherwell. Alternatively, it’s often used with other DevOps tools, such as Azure DevOps, or with monitoring apps, such as Micro Focus OpsBridge or Datadog.
ZigiOps offers plenty of integrations for Jira Software that are easy to set up, configure and scale based on your needs.
2. KUBERNETES
Kubernetes (K8) is a open-source container orchestration solution used by teams to deploy and manage containerized applications and services. With it, you can easily manage containers at scale, even if you’re working with hundreds of them, and deploy them to a cluster of hosts.
If you only have a few container units, you might not need Kubernetes or a similar container orchestration system, but if you need to scale your resources and work with a growing number of containers, Kubernetes is one of the best available solutions for this (together with Docker).
In short, Kubernetes allows you to automate and scale container management, and deploy them to a cluster of machines.
With ZigiOps, you can sync Kubernetes with some of the most popular monitoring tools, like Micro Focus OpsBridge and VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), or also connect it to your ITSM tools, such as ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, or Cherwell.
Check out all our Kubernetes integrations to see some of the use cases we cover.
3. AZURE DEVOPS
Azure DevOps is one of the popular DevOps solutions out there, which comes in a SaaS (Software as a service) format. It’s developed by Microsoft and features a number of services, such as Azure Boards, Azure Pipelines, Azure Artifacts, Azure Repos, Azure TestPlans. These can be accessed either from your browser or from an IDE client. It allows for both cloud (Azure DevOps Services) and on-premises (Azure DevOps Server) deployment.
With ZigiOps, you can integrate Azure DevOps with different ITSM tools like ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, TOPdesk, Zendesk Support, and Ivanti, and also connect it to your CRM system, such as Salesforce or Zendesk Sell.
4. ANSIBLE
Ansible is another open-source DevOps tool used for configuration management and deployment automation, developed by Red Hat. It enables working with infrastructure as code (IaC), which is one of the key DevOps trends for the year, and helps cut down the time necessary for the configuration of CI/CD pipelines by automating it. It’s similar to Puppet and Chef, but uses simple Yet Another Markup Language (YAML) syntax, to simplify things even further
Ansible readily connects with other DevOps tools, allowing you to speed up the deployment process and build stronger, more resilient applications.
5. GITHUB
GitHub is one of the most popular development platforms worldwide, used for software development and version control. It allows developers to quickly iterate code and make instant rollbacks in the case of a failure. It provides solid collaboration features, such as contirnuous integration, task management, bug tracking, and requests for new features.
We’re currently building a number of connectors for GitHub, so stay tuned for more info.
6. JENKINS
Jenkins is an open-source CI/CD automation server that helps automate the different elements and stages of your pipeline, by customizing it according to your own needs.
It has a vast ecosystem of plugins, which allow you to integrate it with many other DevOps tools, such as Docker, Puppet, Perforce, Apache Ant, Apache Maven, different AWS services, Git, and more.
At ZigiWave, we’re working on a few Jenkins integrations that we’ll announce soon.
7. SLACK
Strictly speaking, Slack is not a DevOps tool; it’s used by all kinds of teams and companies worldwide, and is one of the most popular tools for remote work, enabling teams to communicate efficiently and not get lost in endless email threads. As a DevOps tool, it’s used by teams for real-time communication, and it also integrates with many other DevOps tools, helping teams progress faster towards common goals.
Slack features public and private channels, as well as direct messages and voice/video chat options. It integrates easily with several other tools used in a DevOps framework, such as GitHub, Jenkins, Runscope, and more. It also easily connects with Google Drive, Dropbox, Trello, Zendesk, and other tools.
8. NAGIOS
Nagios XI is a monitoring tool that can be used within a DevOps framework to locate and address network and infrastructure problems across applications, network protocols, services, and all critical infrastructure elements on any desktop and server operating system. It helps users monitor server performance and gives them a birdseye visibility
Additionally, it streamlines log management and facilitates searching log data.
With ZigiOps, you can integrate Nagios XI with both monitoring and ITSM tools, such as Micro Focus OpsBridge, VMware vRealize Operations, ServiceNow, and Jira Service Management. Check out our Nagios XI integrations for all available connectors.
8. PROMETHEUS
Prometheus is an open-source event monitoring solution used by DevOps and ITSM teams alike to generate time-series metrics, alerts and visualizations that come with a high level of precision.
It’s often used together with other software tools to collect and correlate data from different sources. Organizations often use Prometheus together as a part of their DevOps technology stack, or in addition to other monitoring solutions, such as as VMware vRealize Operations or Micro Focus OpsBridge, for a full overview of their operations.
ZigiOps offers you Prometheus integrations for both of these tools, as well as for some of the most popular ITSM tools, such as ServiceNow, Ivanti and Cherwell.
9. NEWRELIC
NewRelic is another monitoring tool that can be used by DevOps teams to gather data on both application performance and infrastructure. It’s a powerful full-stack data analysis platform that allows you to collect all kinds of software metrics, events and logs. It allows you to detect anomalies, correlate events and issues, and get a synthetized version of all detected anomalies in order to tackle them fast.
NewRelic is often used together with other monitoring tools in an Agile framework, such as Micro Focus OpsBridge, VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) or Splunk. Additionally, it might be essential to sync it with the ITSM tools your company is using, such as ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, Cherwell, or others. We offer NewRelic integrations for all of these software applications.
Using the right DevOps stack is essential for the success of your development projects
As you could see, there are plenty of tools that can make an excellent addition to your DevOps toolset, and help you achieve your goals in terms of speed and quality of new deployments, version control, issue detection, project management, and more.
Selecting the right tools is not only a matter of picking individual tools, but also making sure they fit within your software ecosystem, and that you can connect them to the rest of it. This can be achieved with different plugins, APIs, or custom code, but is best managed with a dedicated integration platform, such as ZigiOps. This will allow you to have your tools connect with each other automatically, and simply transfer and update data seamlessly.
