GitLab Customers Hope To Stay Out Of The Doghouse If Acquired By Datadog

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GitLab is a leading platform for version control, continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), and collaboration. With its robust features and security focus, GitLab has gained a loyal user base and has become a go-to solution for enterprise developers worldwide. A recent rumor, however, suggests that Datadog, a popular monitoring and analytics platform, is eyeing a potential acquisition of GitLab. One of Datadog’s popular entry points in enterprises is with the development community, where applications are instrumented for monitoring and analytics. Here’s Forrester’s take on what such a sale could mean for the DevOps community:

  • DevOps tools get even more consolidated. Enterprises are looking to reduce the number of vendors they’re paying for DevOps tooling. By bringing together two powerful tools, a merger would offer users a more integrated and streamlined experience. The combination of GitLab’s version control capabilities with Datadog’s monitoring and analytics expertise, already popular among developers, perpetuates a movement towards solutions that cater to the end-to-end needs of development teams.
  • Monitoring and analytics get smarter. Datadog’s core AIOps and observability strength lies in its monitoring and analytics capabilities, providing real-time insights into infrastructure, applications, and logs. Its targeting of the development community gives it a foothold in enterprises and can be a driver for this potential acquisition. Integrating GitLab with Datadog’s monitoring tools would provide developers with a deeper understanding of runtime issues based on code changes and deployments that GitLab is intimately familiar with. This would enable them to identify and resolve issues more efficiently, possibly even automatically with little or no human intervention, leading to improved development and operational efficiency.
  • Runtime feedback is brought to the CI/CD pipeline. GitLab has been widely recognized for its robust CI/CD features, allowing developers to automate and accelerate their software development lifecycle. The potential acquisition by Datadog would allow automatic detection and creation of defects for day-two issues, leveraging monitoring and analytics data within their pipeline even further than today, as two separate companies. This would provide developers with valuable context, empower them to make data-driven decisions, reduce mean time to repair, and even proactively automate remediations.

There Are Challenges As Well As Opportunities

While the acquisition holds promise, there are concerns, as well. Datadog has a lot of open-source projects, but they’re currently hosted by GitLab’s contributor GitHub. GitLab’s contributors would likely clamor for a migration while existing Datadog customers might push back. GitLab is already known for excellent integration of tooling, but bringing Datadog into GitLab would take time.

On the flip side, GitLab needs resources to grow as it struggles to achieve profitability. Datadog’s resources and expertise could help GitLab accelerate its roadmap, as well as give GitLab the ability to stay price-competitive with GitHub (which has its parent Microsoft’s resources as a backstop).

What Should I Do If A Merger Happens?

First of all, don’t panic. Mergers among DevOps vendors are commonplace now, as many recognize the value of end-to-end platforms. Since the two products are complementary, not competitive, think about ways you can use a more connected system with DevOps tools and observability.

  • If you’re a Datadog user, don’t expect many immediate changes. If you’re also a Datadog contributor, expect a future move of the Datadog open-source projects to GitLab — you may need to make a few changes to your process, but GitLab has experts who will maintain history. Your PRs will soon be called merge requests.
  • If you’re a GitLab user, look to GitLab for assurances of continuity of service. Reevaluate the value GitLab brings to your business, making sure it’s the right fit — with or without Datadog. Where there’s smoke, there could be fire; the acquisition as being reported in multiple outlets might not materialize, but that doesn’t mean some of the reported rumors aren’t true. Be prepared, regardless of vendor, for transactions like this to happen.

Join The Conversation

We invite you to reach out to any of us through social media to provide feedback. If you prefer more formal or private discussions, email inquiry@forrester.com to set up a meeting! For our research on these topics, click any of the links below to follow our respective areas of coverage and to continue the discussion.

Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, Open Source: Chris Condo at Forrester.com

Application Development, Mobile Technology: Andrew Cornwall at Forrester.com

AIOps, Observability, Monitoring, Analytics: Carlos Casanova at Forrester.com