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GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

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Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#31

Post by ojosilva »

teruakohatu wrote: post #26
ojosilva wrote: post #25

Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing, enterprises out there choose all-in-one solutions because they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation, POC efforts from internal buyers and streamlined consulting at the post-sale effort. But once in, Gitlab, differently from SAP or Salesforce, is customized from around instead of from within. Meaning…

> Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing Unless you are talking about revenue or profit, then I don't think could you could give a worse insult > they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation I think this is the sales pitch of every software product. SAP does not come cheap, in terms of both software and the total cost of moving to SAP. Two c…

Look, you're right, it wasn't meant as an insult but does sound like one since people perceive SAP as a mostly a bad thing even though it's a wildly successful company that has been solving serious ERP problems for 1000s of clients worldwide. I've actually met more people that say "thank god we finally got SAP in here" than people who not. It doesn't mean it's not a dreaded beast, but, think about it, it actually does do a thing or two for a lot of people.

But, OTOH, this is what Gitlab pitches at their website: "A complete toolchain in one application". And "end-to-end platform", and, yes, "thousands of features" (it's literally on their front-page like it's a good thing!).

> I think this is the sales pitch of every software product.

Like SAP, but obviously on a different scale, Gitlab has invested heavy money in Gartner and Forrester analysts. And I've counted at least 40 logos they claim to replace in their huge feature tables. Only SAP/Salesforce-muscle apps typically claim ample and ambitious replacement targets, which are meant to mean "more bang for the buck" but typically mean "less bang and more buck". This heavy display of self-confidence is unprecedented in the DevOps space, where no single app is pitching to replace so many tools given the heterogeneous nature of dev and ops environments. So, I mean, this is very, very cocky marketing on their part, so maybe they do deserve to be called an SAP as in "SAP-the-big-bad-thing" adjective.

So yes, they do look more and more like the SAP-equivalent in DevOps. Gitlab is NOT an ERP, so the size of implementations are in very different scales and orders of magnitude. However Gitlab is more of an enterprise software company than a cloud one and they probably have very high-growth targets as they have raised some serious money from serious investors, which means they probably need to follow a similar path to other platformy enterprise sw behemoths if they are true to the marketing on their front page.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#32

Post by marcocampos »

gravity_123 wrote: post #21
brainless wrote: post #15

I have a genuine curiosity about GitLab as a business: Are they actually growing much more in the mindset of developers since GitHub started doing some things right? I have personally always wanted alternatives and GitLab* is a good one, but the reason I can not say they are a great one is because somehow* their story to me feels too much "against GitHub" than their own story. GitHub made a lot of mess and eventually…

> This matters a lot because community is great power, whoever holds it, holds key to future mindshare. Bitbucket and atlassian are still surviving despite not having any community presence on them. As long as bitbucket offers value(self hosting, CI, etc) and enterprises use them I think it'll be fine.

Most companies that I see using Bitbucket do so not because it's a good product but because it's usually cheap when you are already paying for JIRA and Confluence and because of the tight integration with those tools.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#33

Post by orf »

ojosilva wrote: post #25

Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing, enterprises out there choose all-in-one solutions because they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation, POC efforts from internal buyers and streamlined consulting at the post-sale effort. But once in, Gitlab, differently from SAP or Salesforce, is customized from around instead of from within. Meaning…

I’m a Gitlab fanboy, but you’re right. We run a medium sized Gitlab instance and wanted to automate a bunch of tasks on it - like you should as a good adherent to DevOps principals.

But Gitlab is actively hostile to you building automations on top of it. Every access token is tied to a Gitlab User and every user is charged X$ a month, regardless of if it’s a bot or not.

So the end result of this is a single bot user with poorly scoped permissions that can only be configured by an administrator. Great.

They are slowly moving forward with this epic[1] but the discussions around pricing are ridiculous. Don’t you _want_ people to build automations around Gitlab, as it makes it more entrenched in your org. Stop making it harder by effectively charging hundreds of dollars a year per bot user.

Would love any comments you have on that @syste.

1. https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/3559

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#34

Post by dx034 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #17
brainless wrote: post #15

I have a genuine curiosity about GitLab as a business: Are they actually growing much more in the mindset of developers since GitHub started doing some things right? I have personally always wanted alternatives and GitLab* is a good one, but the reason I can not say they are a great one is because somehow* their story to me feels too much "against GitHub" than their own story. GitHub made a lot of mess and eventually…

Tried locally hosted Gitlab once. It was so cumbersome to install I doubt I'd ever try again without containers or proven installers.

I installed it within 5 minutes locally. If anything, Gitlab is perfect to quickly set up code repositories in environments where on-prem is a hard requirement.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#35

Post by rifelpet »

orf wrote: post #33
ojosilva wrote: post #25

Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing, enterprises out there choose all-in-one solutions because they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation, POC efforts from internal buyers and streamlined consulting at the post-sale effort. But once in, Gitlab, differently from SAP or Salesforce, is customized from around instead of from within. Meaning…

I’m a Gitlab fanboy, but you’re right. We run a medium sized Gitlab instance and wanted to automate a bunch of tasks on it - like you should as a good adherent to DevOps principals. But Gitlab is actively hostile to you building automations on top of it. Every access token is tied to a Gitlab User and every user is charged X$ a month, regardless of if it’s a bot or not. So the end result of this is a single bot user…

They're addressing the lack of service accounts, targeted for 13.1:

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/6883

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#36

Post by paulryanrogers »

dx034 wrote: post #34
paulryanrogers wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried locally hosted Gitlab once. It was so cumbersome to install I doubt I'd ever try again without containers or proven installers.

I installed it within 5 minutes locally. If anything, Gitlab is perfect to quickly set up code repositories in environments where on-prem is a hard requirement.

Perhaps it has gotten better. My experience was a few years ago.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#37

Post by brmgb »

ojosilva wrote: post #25

Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing, enterprises out there choose all-in-one solutions because they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation, POC efforts from internal buyers and streamlined consulting at the post-sale effort. But once in, Gitlab, differently from SAP or Salesforce, is customized from around instead of from within. Meaning…

> That's where Gitlab should be putting their efforts, in building a solid platform for dev and ops taking code to production instead of acquiring middle-of-the-road in-between tech like Peach Tech and Fuzzit, that add complexity to the core offering without checking many boxes for the clients seriously on the lookout for app/api testing.

I will posit that Gitlab knows their own strategy better than you and that they don't acquire companies randomly. They didn't get where they are by randomly throwing darts at the board.

It's not an either/or situation anyway. They most likely already have ressources allocated to the app/api testing part of their business. That's an avenue they have been pursuing for a long time. They must have a fairly solid idea of what their growth potential is there.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#38

Post by oneplane »

sytse wrote: post #12
sytse wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol!

Sorry, the lol was meant as a reply to ‘ One could argue that GitLab gets more and more mature but somehow still has Peach Fuzz.’

Haha yeah, I know ;-) I had HN open in two tabs and somehow managed to create a mental race-condition and posted my posts in the wrong order.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#39

Post by majkinetor »

ojosilva wrote: post #25

Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing, enterprises out there choose all-in-one solutions because they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation, POC efforts from internal buyers and streamlined consulting at the post-sale effort. But once in, Gitlab, differently from SAP or Salesforce, is customized from around instead of from within. Meaning…

You nailed it. I am personally guilty of creating all kinds of helper tools over GitLab CI/CD madness.

This is exactly what is the problem with GitLab - too many features and high complexity and on the other hand, missing some fairly basic and important stuff.

And then there is that kubernates fetish... :S

I wonder every several weeks what is keeping me on it - is it just sunken cost of my team or there is something more...

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#40

Post by oneplane »

mcny wrote: post #14
sytse wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, the lol was meant as a reply to ‘ One could argue that GitLab gets more and more mature but somehow still has Peach Fuzz.’

That’s funnier than the joke itself as I was scratching my head to understand the joke in > It makes sense for those companies to expand beyond what they already have. Starting with version control systems, going on to Wikis, static websites, actions/automation, CI, artifact hosting. It will eventually contain the entire lifecycle it seems. Because from what I understand wasn’t this the goal from early on? :)

On one hand yes, on the other hand there is a difference in making better products vs. enriching the product by buying other products and integrating them. On the other hand, there is no single 'right way' of course, and adding knowledge, people and IP via acquisition is a functional way to do that.

But people will inevitably compare products and with GitLab vs. GitHub it's an obvious one to make. I do get the feeling that since Microsoft bought GitHub they are accelerating their feature releases to be more in line with GitLab's speed.

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