Jenkins- Continuous Integration made easy!
Hey Guys! This time, I am back with one more research. This research is on Jenkins, and why do industries love Jenkins.
To start our discussion about Jenkins, we first need to understand the challenge which Industries used to face, that Jenkins helps industries to solve.
The Challenge:
As an organization, we need to continuously design and develop new products as well as update and improvise the old ones. This process is called as “Continuous Delivery” or “Continuous Integration”.
What is CI / CD?
Continuous Integration or Delivery is a process wherein developers commit changes to source code from a shared repository, and all the changes to the source code are built continuously. This can occur multiple times daily. Each commit is continuously monitored by the CI Server, increasing the efficiency of code builds and verification. This removes the testers’ burdens, permitting quicker integration and fewer wasted resources.
Here comes The Challenge!
However, the companies have to go through a long chain of various stages, also called as a “Pipeline”.
The organizations or companies spend a lot of time and human resource in each and every stage. But what if we can reduce the time and human resources required for this process?
The Solution:
You might be thinking on the above challenge, so let us move on to the solution. The solution is very easy to guess, and it is, Automation!
However, Automating the “Continuous Delivery” or “Continuous Integration” was not as easy as guessing the solution, a few years back. But now, since the last 8 to 10 years, things have changed drastically. How?, well thanks to Jenkins!
Now, the organizations and companies can automate the whole CI / CD pipeline with the help of Jenkins, thus reducing the time and human resources required for this process
The Book Definition of Jenkins:
Jenkins is a self-contained, open source automation server which can be used to automate all sorts of tasks related to building, testing, and delivering or deploying software.
Jenkins can be installed through native system packages, Docker, or even run standalone by any machine with a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) installed.
What can Organisations do with Jenkins?
With Jenkins, organisations can accelerate the software development process through automation. Jenkins integrates development life-cycle processes of all kinds, including build, document, test, package, stage, deploy, static analysis, and much more.
Jenkins achieves Continuous Integration with the help of plugins. Plugins allow the integration of Various DevOps stages. So if an organization wants to integrate a particular tool, it needs to install the plugins for that tool. Jenkins have a TON of plugins available, so that we can integrate a lot of technologies with Jenkins.
Benefits of Jenkins:
- 1. Jenkins is an open-source tool that is extremely easy to install and use. You need no extra components to use it.
- 2. It is free and available to be used with different platforms, such as Windows, Linux, MacOS, and others.
- 3. It is widely used, so finding support on online communities is not a big problem.
- 4. Jenkins automates all integration work. Integration issues are scarce, and so, it helps in saving time and money over the project lifecycle.
- 5. It is easy to configure, extend, and modify. It allows the instant generation of tests and building, automation, and deployment of code on different platforms.
- 6. Jenkins can be configured to run CI and CD concepts properly.
- 7. It can easily detect and fix issues. The software is always ready for a sudden release.
- 8. Supports a variety of plugins, which allows better flexibility.
- 9. It helps in detecting errors very early, thus saving developers a lot of time and hard work.
Companies using Jenkins
Today, there are not just tens or hundreds, but THOUSANDS of companies who use Jenkins!
Facebook, Netflix, Udemy, LinkedIn, Google, Robinhood, Twitch, GitHub, Dell, eBay, NASA, SPACEX, Sony, Yahoo, Tumblr are some of Well-known companies and organisations, who admit that they use Jenkins. You can see the list and details of all the companies using Jenkins here.
Case Studies
There are not a lot of case studies about companies using Jenkins available on the internet, but here are a few which I found:
Case Study #1: D4Science
Amping up scientific research with CI/CD powered by Jenkins
To promote open science practices and support scientific communities while serving 11k registered users in 45 countries, D4Science introduced a new delivery pipeline that replaced their pre-existing build platform.
Of course, they had to build and release their software framework (gCube) in a way that would support multi-project releases at scale — from 200+ Git repositories within the same day! It had to be fast, automate all release activities, and it had to deliver incremental releases to address user requirements quickly. Most of all, the solution had to be cost-effective.
Using Jenkins, they created an innovative approach to software delivery: a continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, scalable, easy to maintain, and upgradable at a minimal cost.
Discover how D4Science empowers e-Science and virtual research communities with software released via Jenkins. Read the Jenkins case study featuring D4Science here!
Case Study #2: Gainsight
Humanizing CSX with tech innovation and a robust DevSecOps platform
Gainsight’s customer service experience platform helps customer success teams at more than 100 leading IT and healthcare clients. How? By driving engagement for tens of thousands of their customers.
That’s why the engineering team at Gainsight approached the customer experience by building a smarter, faster DevSecOps platform using Jenkins. They stuck to an infrastructure-as-code approach while integrating various tools and programming languages all within the platform. And they secured processes with better visibility and air-tight quality control.
The result was a flexible DevSecOps infrastructure, 95% of which is scalable with code. And the cost of infrastructure costs was 40% less. That provides Gainsight with ease of collaboration, keener operational insight, and — because builds are 30% faster — the ability to stay a step ahead of the competition.
Read why Gainsight’s lead DevOps engineer, Prudviraj Pentakota, says “Jenkins is the epicenter of DevSecOps in our organization.” Get the full story here.
Case Study #3: Avoris Travel
Reinventing travel with an inventive technology platform
Part of Barceló Group, Ávoris Travel is behind prominent destination travel brands like LeSki, Le Musik, and a selection of author travels under its “Viagens Com Assinatura” signature travel concept. A proprietary database and a smart, dynamic booking engine are the tickets to offering differentiating and inventive travel opportunities.
Also unique to Avoris is a discreet machining technology that enables agents to enter specific criteria to search and find all types of trips and travel opportunities across the entire network.
“Our infrastructure is very important because we have to be online to meet customer demand anywhere in the world,” said Alejandro Alvarez Vazquez, Sysadmin, Avoris Travel. “Our CI/CD platform is used by 200 people. The services that we build and deploy are used by thousands of potential clients and by our network of 675 own agencies located in Spain and Portugal.”
Read the case study to learn how the flexibility of Jenkins plugins helped Avoris reduce build times by over 50% and became a go-to, scalable infrastructure supporting 675 agencies and over 2.8 million international consumers.
If you want to see some more case studies, you can click here.
Final Words
In today’s world, with technologies progressing in a never before speed, Companies require development teams to produce and deliver high-quality software better and faster than their competition.
Now, development teams are building scalable and efficient software delivery engines by creating repeatable processes which standardize development and its best practices. Automated testing is one such activity by which developer’s code is tested in the same standard way for every change and every cycle so that management and other users can trust that every change is well tested before it is moved to production.
Using Jenkins can save a lot of time for developers, improves code quality and coverage, and provide management great control over software development.
Hence, in Industry, Jenkins is very well appreciated and a lot of companies uses it on a daily basis. It’s a great tool to learn for upcoming software developers as well.
