The Value Armory Adds on Top of Open Source Spinnaker

We’re often asked why companies should work with Armory when Spinnaker is open source and free. The short answer is: a) open source Spinnaker isn’t really free, and b) Armory provides compelling enterprise-grade features and support.

Open Source Spinnaker Isn’t Really Free

Spinnaker is a powerful open source tool for continuous delivery, greatly enhancing the ability of engineering teams to deploy with velocity and safety. Every day, hundreds of DevOps teams around the world are leveraging the value of open source Spinnaker. But while the open source platform is technically free, installing and managing Spinnaker has a real cost of its own.

Spinnaker consists of ten sub-services (plus additional external dependencies like S3 and Redis). The initial setup, installation and implementation of these services can be a challenge, while ongoing maintenance, upgrades, and scaling of the platform can all consume significant attention and resources. Moving to microservices and running continuous delivery at scale means using many other services that are also open source, which also require your engineers’ attention. If you have even three engineers dedicated to managing Spinnaker (and we often see Global 2000 companies with many more), you are easily spending $600,000+ per year on Spinnaker.

When you partner with Armory, we smooth the Spinnaker roadway. From scoping to implementation to managing, scaling, bug-fixing, training, and generally maximizing the value you get out of Spinnaker’s many features, Armory’s team is here to help. So, you can pay your engineers to install / configure / manage / maintain this “free” software, or you can invest in Armory and free up your engineers to do the job they were hired to do – build compelling products for your customers.

Armory Enhances, Extends, and Supports your Spinnaker Instance

Armory is Spinnaker at enterprise scale. Our entire purpose is taking the promise of Spinnaker — smooth and consistent software delivery to hybrid cloud and multicloud environments at scale — and making it a reality for enterprises so they can deliver better software, faster.

Armory has more experience installing Spinnaker in complex enterprise environments than any other company. We become the expert team member who does the Spinnaker infrastructure work for you. We abstract away the complexities to get you moving as quickly as possible, letting you use Spinnaker without having to be an expert on installation, upgrades, monitoring, and maintenance. We are active members of the OSS community and are always on the lookout for (and contributing to) best practices for Spinnaker use. We also empower the rest of your team with 24/7 support, services, and training, as well as access to our SAs.

In addition to our services and support, our product is enterprise-grade, scalable, and packed with features that help you use Spinnaker at scale, including:

• Armory Halyard Installer
  • Install, configure, deploy and update your Spinnaker instance with ease
  • Get Spinnaker up and running in minutes instead of weeks, and automate future upgrades and software updates
• Armory Terraform Integration
  • Seamless integration of Spinnaker with Hashicorp Terraform
  • Run Terraform plan / apply / destroy / output stages as part of your Spinnaker pipeline
• Armory Halyard Secrets
  • Encrypt secrets used within your Spinnaker configuration files
  • Hashicorp Vault and encrypted S3 buckets are both supported as secrets engines
• Armory Pipeline-as-Code (Dinghy^TM)
  • Dynamically create and store Spinnaker pipelines in a Github repository
  • Enables a) version control, templates, and modularization in your pipelines, and b) rapid, repeatable, scaling of pipelines by avoiding the need to use the Spinnaker pipeline UI
• Armory SDLC Policy Engine
  • Set up and enforce pipeline compliance rules across your entire enterprise
  • Key DevSecOps feature in ensuring security scanning and proper configuration before deployment
• Armory Managed Spinnaker
  • A Spinnaker instance running in your datacenter, installed and managed by Armory engineers
  • Armory has the systems to find, troubleshoot, analyze, and fix issues before you even know they’re happening, with a 99.95% uptime SLA

All of these features are extensions to OSS Spinnaker – we never fork.

So yes, Spinnaker is open source and free, but everything comes at a price. The hidden cost is the time your engineers will be spending installing, motioning and upgrading free software instead of creating proprietary value for your business. Whether you are currently up and running with Spinnaker, are just starting your DevOps journey, or anywhere in between, reach out to us here to see how Armory can help you ship better software, faster.