Our primary use case is we use it for our deployments and our CI/CD pipelines. Then, we allow our developers to take control of their environments.

How has it helped my organization?

It simplifies our entire process because we used to have to do everything manually every time a new client came on, every time a new build came on, or we wanted to launch a new product. We would then have to go through all the work manually, where now it is just a very automated, simplified process. It has made our licensing and our licensing tracking significantly easier because it is all right there in our account.

What is most valuable?

The ease of use as far as getting it up and running, especially now that we have hundreds of applications wanting to go online and wanting their own built. We simply hand clients a CloudFormation template, and say, "Here is your account. We put the restrictions on your account. You can take care of yourself. If you don't like it, we will destroy and rebuild it." This allows us to focus on working with the developer on developer issues, not having to sit there and work through all the problems which come with setting up a pipeline, then setting up a Jenkins server, setting up GitHub hooks, and setting up everything else. It has helped us to really simplify our process.

What needs improvement?

The one thing that CloudBees Enterprise Jenkins does not do well is backup. We have to create our own backup systems in order to manage it, because our clients like to store thousands of jobs in their build histories. The problem that we have is that takes up space. We have to then back these up and get them out of the main system. We need a better integrated backup solution, which also can also do pruning in it and have time constraints with retention and restore.

I would like to see a more click-through, automatic creation of AML files. Sometimes, we give guides for developers in order to do things, but not all of them are familiar enough with AML, as they are Java developers. They are not familiar enough with some of the concepts that Jenkins uses. It would be nice to have more click-through where they could just select pieces.

For how long have I used the solution?

Three to five years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is extremely scalable. We go over it with our CloudFormation template, and our clients can go ahead and select their scaling capabilities. They can spin up all the containers that they want, and shut them down as needed, so it is one of the more scalable products that we have used.

We make a lot of use of the AWS infrastructure when it comes to AWS Auto Scaling and automatic deployments. It allows us to package it up and make a set thing. Then, using CloudFormation, it allows us to make an AWS environment with CloudBees Jenkins Enterprise. This is something that our developers can to launch by themselves.

We have anywhere from 1000 applications to 2000 applications deploying on it at any given time.

How is customer service and technical support?

The few times that we have needed technical support, it has been great. There have been very few problems with it to begin with. The times that we have run into an issue, it was just been a matter of opening a CloudBees ticket, then working with CloudBees through emails usually to get it resolved. Nine out of ten times it was resolved within one or two contacts.

Which solutions did we use previously?

It used to take weeks for us to:

* Get Jenkins up and running.

* Get the GitHub integrations going.

* Get all the permissions set up.

* Get the hardware provisions.

Now, instead of it taking weeks to do this along with the approval processes alone (which was just a nightmare), we now say, "This application team needs their environment set up," and we hand it to them. It has changed from a three to six week process down to a one hour approval process deciding whether an app team is allowed to do something or not. We just hand them their template and the product does what it needs to do.

How was the initial setup?

The integration and configuration of this product in our AWS environment was easy.

It integrated with GitHub, which was a seamless integration. There is the Jenkins plugin that we use. We use also Pivotal Cloud Foundry, and there is a plugin for that, which we found seamless to integrate too.

What was our ROI?

It has simplified our lives so much. It has reduced our time from three to six weeks for deployment down to just a few hours. In doing so, it has freed us up to do the important stuff that we need to do with developers.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Purchasing on the AWS Marketplace was easy. We don't worry about licensing and keeping track of it. We don't worry about negotiating contracts. It just happens. We get the bill, which is billed to our account. It is very painless.

We chose to use the AWS Marketplace for the simplicity of being able to allow our developers to just launch it and its availability in all regions. Through the AWS Marketplace, you point the region that you want your development in, and it works.

The AWS Marketplace pricing is on par with going directly to CloudBees. It's always nice if it is cheaper, but it's on par. This is not a pain point for us.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We considered solutions, like TeamCity, GitLabs, and a built-in CI/CD. We looked at a bunch of other little solution, but because CloudBees had the enterprise support, this set it apart from all the other solution that we looked at. Plus, everyone already had familiarity using Jenkins to begin with.

What other advice do I have?

Use the AWS Marketplace. Going through the AWS Marketplace makes life ten times easier, and you can be so hands off of it.

Go for Jenkins, as it is the industry standard and everyone knows it. There are a million plugins available for it. I see no other reason to go with anything else.

We put a lot of trust in CloudBees. The enterprise version of the backup that we have with the CloudBees support team is the extra that they put on top of it which the open source version of Jenkins doesn't have. The extras really help solidify it and make it a true enterprise solution. As opposed to the open source version of it or the free version of it where we sit there and struggle with it thinking, "Alright, how do we get support for this? This person ran out of disk space." We don't have those problems with this because it does have scalability built into it that the open source doesn't have.