What’s Trending with DevOps Tools: A Study Using Google

A lot of the conversation on DevOps is focused on what are the right tools to accomplish our goals. The popularity of a tool is more than an indication of interest. Many of the popular DevOps tools are open source and the long-term viability of a project is dependent on the number of users of that project along with the ease of supporting it.

While emphasizing collaboration and integration, DevOps also looks to automation tools that can leverage an increasingly programmable and dynamic infrastructure from a lifecycle perspective. Version control and automating code deployments are two of the most impactful common tools. But, there are many more. Others include configuration management, containerization and IaaS.

In this post, we are exploring some of the more common DevOps tools trends over the past four years, starting in 2010.



The following table is a summary of the DevOps tools we will be talking about in this post.

Source: Google Trends

Location: Worldwide

Category: Computers & Electronics

Date Range: January 2010 – June 2014

Configuration Management

Containerization Tools

As you can see, Chef and Puppet have shown a fairly steady climb during the past four years compared to other configuration management tools. Among the two, Chef has the upper hand. Ansible, a new comer to DevOps, is starting, though, to gain popularity. While Juju is becoming a very interesting tool, it hasn’t really gained any popularity. It has an event-based model that provides node bringup, discovery, configuration and maintenance, along with a GUI display of the environment. However, it has many PaaS-like restrictions in terms of flexibility, and that’s probably why it has never picked up.





Check out the explosion of Docker compared to everyone else! In March 2013, Docker hit the market and was introduced to a bevy of developers. Since then, it has absolutely shot up in popularity. It has also brought with it a great general interest in containerization. But, by and large, developers’ interest in Docker easily surpasses other containerization methods.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)









The graph shows a surprising result. During our period of study, Azure was searched more frequently than AWS. But, this may likely be because Microsoft has used the term Azure for other products to help build its brand. The blue line for AWS shows a clear move away from the data center to IaaS. By adjusting the trend terms a bit, we get:

Now, we see that OpenStack has gathered a marked amount of interest. Certainly, this can be the result of a lot of companies investing large amounts in OpenStack, including IBM and Rackspace. Additionally, large enterprises are interested in OpenStack to set up their internal data centers.

Well, there you have it. A pretty good look during the past four years, using Google Trends, at what DevOps tools are getting attention and obvious deployment, and which ones are still looking for wider use.

If you want to continue the discussion about DevOps and its tools, let us know what you think or what you know at info@flux7.com. Or, find out more about Flux7’s DevOps Approach for SMBs and enterprises by visiting us at www.flux7.com, where you can also check out a 60-point DevOps readiness assessment.