Bitbucket Server's sunset on February 15th, 2024:  Evolving to streamlined DevSecOps from a disjointed past

Tick-tock, Bitbucket Server users. As Atlassian shifts its focus to cloud solutions, discontinuing Bitbucket Server, it's crunch time to find a reliable alternative. Continuing with Bitbucket Server beyond this point poses an increased risk, associated with a lack of active support, unresolved bugs, and unaddressed security vulnerabilities. So, what does the future look like for BitBucket Server users?

Bitbucket Server users are left with multiple options:

• Keep using Bitbucket Server, enduring increased risk due to lack of support, bugs, and security fixes.
• Migrate to Bitbucket Data Center or Cloud, missing key capabilities needed for reliable software delivery, such as Feature Flags.
• Switch to a different vendor. In that case, we suggest you consider Harness, our AI-powered Software Delivery Platform

But why a software delivery platform, you ask? 

Code is king in the realm of software delivery. As we navigate the ever-shifting digital landscape, a robust, cohesive platform for managing, reviewing, building, testing, and deploying code is critical. Clinging to a patchwork of standalone tools not only fragments your experience but also devours precious time on context-switching instead of coding, chipping away at productivity. Imagine the complexity of managing CI, CD, and feature flags separately, with the added burden of mastering these tools, users and permissions management, handling multiple procurement processes, and building and maintaining system integrations. That's a lot of redundant work.

Switching to a consolidated DevSecOps platform changes the game. It streamlines operations, slashes maintenance hours, and boosts security, allowing developers to laser-focus on crafting code rather than wrestling with a jumbled toolchain.

Why Harness is your ultimate devSecOps platform

In the competitive DevOps landscape, platform engineers are on the lookout for tools that can scale with their needs. At Harness, we're committed to delivering an excellent developer experience, facilitating the sharing of best practices, and ensuring effective governance without being burdensome.

Our approach is validated; Harness was ranked first for the Platform Engineering use case in the Gartner 2023 Critical Capabilities for DevOps Platforms report (more on this in our blog why platform engineers trust harness ).

In the words of Ratna Devarapalli, Director of IT - Architecture, Platform Engineering & DevOps at United Airlines:

“None of the other tools we evaluated could give us the ‘shift left’ approach that we needed. By choosing Harness for CI and CD, we were able to give the governance policies to the developers and create the guardrails we needed. Harness gives us a platform rather than just a DevOps tool.” 

To read more about how Harness helped United Airlines Accelerates Deployments by 75% With Harness visit United Airlines Case Study.

So what is it that makes Harness shine? Let’s dive in. 

Next generation CI/CD 

Harness revolutionizes DevOps workflows, offering unparalleled speed and intelligence in software delivery:

Fastest CI‍

Harness CI is up to 4x faster than competing CI tools. This unparalleled speed amplifies developer efficiency as well as translates to significant infrastructure cost savings, due to reduced build time and competitive cloud pricing. Key features contributing to this speed include:

• Test Intelligence: Harness CI's ML-based Test Intelligence feature intelligently identifies and runs only the tests impacted by recent code changes, reducing test cycle times by as much as 80%.
• Cache Intelligence: With the push of a button, Cache Intelligence takes charge of caching common dependencies and Docker layers, speeding up build times and simplifying the caching process.
• Isolated cloud build machines: with Harness’s no-share infrastructure Harness ensures performance without the noisy neighbors to slow you down.

World’s most advanced CD 

• Smart deployment strategies: Harness's CD capabilities stand out with out-of-the-box deployment strategies like Blue/Green and Canary, so you don’t need to waste time scripting complex logic. Paired with AI-assisted release verification, and automatic rollbacks, deployments are quick and fail-proof. 
• Seamless multi-cloud deployments with proactive infrastructure management: Harness enables effortless deployments across major common cloud providers including AWS, GCP, and Azure, as well as seamless integration with Terraform and other similar tools for cost-effective, on-demand environment provisioning, enhancing deployment flexibility and reducing infrastructure cost.

• GitOps excellence: Harness champions comprehensive GitOps support with native integrations for Argo and Flux, and a centralized control plane for visibility across clusters

Smart Feature Flags

Harness simplifies progressive delivery with Smart Feature Flags, enabling uninterrupted deployments and selective feature releases. This functionality is enhanced by automatic detection and optional automatic removal of stale flags, helping to prevent feature flag debt from accumulating.

Developer first experience

A recent LinkedIn survey we conducted sheds light on a pressing challenge in the software development industry: a staggering 80% of developers reported spending less than half their working hours on actual coding. This eye-opening figure signals a clear call to action for reshaping our development ecosystems. At Harness, we're tackling this challenge head-on. Harness is not just about improving efficiency; it's about enhancing the joy of creation, ensuring that developers can immerse themselves in their craft with minimal distractions. With Harness, the goal is clear: more coding, less overhead.

Here are a few examples of how Harness streamlines workflows to put coding time back into the hands of developers.

• Streamlined pipeline design - Harness users can easily author and quickly understand pipeline with our intuitive visual drag-and-drop editor, and an 'as-code; editor is also available with auto complete ands schema validation, making editing pipeline in yaml a breeze. Users can easily save their pipelines, stages and steps as templates for future use, cutting down on repetitive tasks.
• Guiding development with 'golden path' templates - Harness encourages best practices from the start, using shared templates, easily discoverable from within pipelines, to promote collaboration and standardize excellence across teams.
• AI-driven diagnostics - Harness empowers developers to troubleshoot and resolve build and deployment failures swiftly and effortlessly, using AI-powered root cause analysis and remediation suggestions.‍
• Bridging development and security: Security is crucial, but so is agility. With Harness, developers can easily request security exemptions, increasing collaboration between developers and the security team.

Security & Governance: The Harness Assurance

Harness is redefining governance and compliance, transforming them into seamless aspects of the CI/CD process, so you can shift-left security without shifting-left the workload.

• Proactive security scans from the get-go: with Harness you can shift-left security with security scanning seamless integration into your CI/CD pipelines. Our Security Testing Orchestration helps your developers prioritize and squash vulnerabilities swiftly, ensuring that security is a constant, not an afterthought.
• Empowered yet governed: Harness embodies OPA-based Policies, providing a framework for consistent governance while maintaining the flexibility for teams to tailor their pipelines. This approach ensures that security checks, like mandatory scans, are embedded in your software delivery process.
• Uncompromising governance and compliance: Harness offers an array of features to keep your pipelines not only efficient but also compliant and secure. This includes easy-to-use Templates, OPA-based policies, robust Secrets Management, and granular Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), all supplemented with Approval workflows, Notifications, and comprehensive Audit Trails. It's the governance you need, tailor-made for your organization's unique demands.
• SLSA L2 Compliance Without Complications: Leverage our Software Supply Chain Assurance to achieve SLSA L2 Compliance with ease. Harness automatically crafts SBOMs and attestations, safeguarding the integrity of your artifacts every step of the way.

‍Crystal-Clear Visibility with Harness

Our DevSecOps platform offers deep visibility across your development pipeline, with detailed insights ranging from DORA metrics to test performance and security assessments. This ensures compliance with regulatory standards and a clear understanding of your processes. Customizable dashboards give you the power to focus on what matters most to you. This level of clarity allows you to identify and resolve bottlenecks quickly, fostering rapid and high-quality software delivery.

Harness Code Repository is here

Harness has already distinguished itself in the realm of DevSecOps, offering stellar CI/CD. The natural progression of this journey was introducing of Source Code Management (SCM).

Revealed at our recent Unscripted event, Harness Code Repository is adding enterprise-grade code management into our platform. Built on the open-source Gitness, this premium module is crafted to simplify and enhance the workflows of development teams.

Harness Code Repository is redefining code collaboration and governance. It offers seamless collaborative reviews and advanced governance features, including branch protection and policy enforcement through OPA, to ensure code complies with predefined organizational standards and best practices. We're also breaking new ground with AI-driven features, beginning with Semantic Search AI. This cutting-edge functionality transforms codebase navigation, allowing developers to use natural language for their queries. It streamlines the onboarding process and simplifies troubleshooting, marking a significant leap in developer efficiency.

Harness Code is set to redefine the integration of code management within the CI/CD pipeline, offering a streamlined experience that bridges coding with deployment. This recent addition promises to enrich developer workflows, bolster productivity, and diminish operational complexity, reinforcing Harness's commitment to an efficient, developer-focused ecosystem.

Conclusion

As we approach the final days of Atlassian Server, it's more than a farewell; it's an invitation to evolve. Harness stands ready to guide you through this transition with a platform that's not just a step up from Bitbucket Server but a leap into the future of DevSecOps. Join us on this journey and redefine what's possible in your software delivery process.

Ready for the next step? sign up to get started, or request a demo to learn more.