DevOps Data Insight Analytics Tools Added to ElectricFlow 8.0

Data analytics collected from a wide range of DevOps tools including Jenkins, JIRA, HP ALM and ServiceNow can now be viewed and utilized within the latest version of the ElectricFlow DevOps release automation platform from Electric Cloud.

The new analytics capabilities in ElectricFlow 8.0 mean that enterprise users can automatically collect and organize insights from a wide range of DevOps tools so they can evaluate the status, health and usefulness of their software development projects. Users can now view these details and other data through customizable dashboards which provide real-time status checks on the projects. The latest analytics capabilities are being integrated through the DevOps Insight Server and Release Command Center within ElectricFlow 8.0.

Users can analyze the accrued data through a multitude of dashboards, including pipeline, deployment and release-oriented screens, to gain deeper views of their projects. The ElectricFlow Community Edition with DevOps Insight is available for free use.

The new analytics features mean that enterprise users can streamline their troubleshooting and analysis of application and performance bottlenecks, view specific tasks as they are being performed and gain much more information more quickly about application workflows.

The ElectricFlow DevOps Insight module is built on ElasticSearch, a open source distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine, and Logstash, which is an open source, server-side data processing pipeline that ingests data from a multitude of sources simultaneously.  The analytics engine extends ElectricFlow's existing catalog of off-the-shelf plug-ins and pulls key metrics from any tools being used in the software development process to provide the data to the user. A software development kit (SDK) is also available to customize the application for use with additional applications and tools.

Data is provided through a drag-and-drop GUI which allows users to create custom reports and dynamic dashboards to visualize information in usable formats.

"Many organizations we talk to report having 60 or more tools in their software delivery pipelines, which makes reporting cumbersome and 'fast feedback' difficult for them to achieve," Steve Brodie, CEO of Electric Cloud, said in a statement.

Robert E. Stroud, an analyst with Forrester Research, told ITPro that the new DevOps analytics capabilities in ElectricFlow 8.0 are notable.

"It makes it much easier for teams to share information about the business value being delivered, allowing them to coordinate their efforts and apply additional resources where required to achieve their desired business outcome," said Stroud. The metrics collected allow a user-centric approach which will help users better evaluate and understand the value in their development projects, he said.

"One of the critical challenges faced in organizations are silos – automation, functional, and, organizational," said Stroud. "DevOps is about eliminating these silos. Electric Cloud, unlike some of the other vendors in the market, is based on a single automation platform – designed to address pipeline automation."

Electric Cloud's main competitors in the DevOps release automation marketplace include CA, IBM, Jenkins and Automic.