GitLab and IBM team up with shared platform for DevOps teams

GitLab partners with IBM on a shared platform for IBM customers. GitLab will be incorporated into IBM’s cloud and AI platform, giving them access to GitLab tools for developing cloud applications.

The new platform will be called GitLab for IBM Cloud Pak. The platform integrates the automation of the IBM Cloud platform with GitLab’s development tools and is to become a “complete, easy-to-use devops platform,” GitLab said. This platform gives IBM customers who develop cloud applications access to a full toolset from GitLab, after which they can easily and largely automated test the applications, including by deploying supercomputer Watson.

IBM users have long wanted more support when developing cloud applications, the company says. That’s what GitLab should now provide for them. “IBM customers want to build applications with Cloud Paks so they can leverage automation, machine learning, and IBM Watson,” said Evaistus Mainsah, general manager of IBM Cloud Private Ecosystem, in a press release.

The two companies emphasize that the collaboration should not lead to a vendor lock-in. Despite the partnership between IBM and GitLab, users can write cloud applications in any language they want and then continue to roll them out to services like Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, or whatever other cloud environment they choose. In 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub, GitLab’s main competitor.