Last week I had the privilege of attending IBM Impact 2014, and I had a great time meeting many of you at the DevOps Zone at the expo, working with others of you as you tried out workshops at dev@Impact, and getting social with those of you who tweeted with #ibmimpact.

While I was chatting with many of you, you asked me some really great questions. Below is a countdown of the top 10 questions from IBM Impact 2014.

1. What is IBM DevOps Services?

   IBM DevOps Services (recently renamed from JazzHub) is a place where you can collaborate with others to develop, track, plan, and deploy software. You can work in free public projects or keep it confidential in private projects. Get the one-minute overview below:

2. What is DevOps?

   DevOps (derived from smooshing the words “development” and “operations” together) is an approach for breaking down silos, simplifying and automating processes, and increasing collaboration in order to more rapidly develop and deploy applications.

   Interested in learning more? Download the e-book DevOps for Dummies.

3. How does IBM DevOps Services relate to BlueMix?

   BlueMix was the talk of the conference, so it was common for people who visited our booth to ask how we related to BlueMix. IBM DevOps Services provides the DevOps services for BlueMix (seems so redundant when I say it that way, right?). You can use IBM DevOps Services to store your code, plan and track your development, manually deploy to BlueMix, or even automatically build and deploy your application to BlueMix whenever a member of your team pushes code to your project’s repository. You can learn more about deploying your application to BlueMix in this whiteboard video:

4. Where did you get your tambourine?

   The PureSystems team really nailed it with their SWAG this year: they gave out tambourines with neon flashing lights. I picked one up on Tuesday, and, when I returned to the booth on Wednesday, the tambourines were completely gone. They were a hot item!

5. How much does IBM DevOps Services cost?

   Public projects are free – create as many as you like. Likewise, contribute to any project you’re invited to, at no cost. In the future, we may introduce limits to what is free for some services, such as storage, build, and deployment, as part of the DevOps Services rate plan we intend to introduce later this year.

   Private projects are currently available at no charge. We intend to introduce a rate plan for DevOps Services later this year. Don’t worry, if you don’t want to incur charges later, you’ll be able to delete your private projects or make them public.

6. What’s new with IBM DevOps Services?

   We couldn’t resist the urge to put a bunch of new features in right before Impact. You can view the complete list of what’s new, or you can check out my video summary below:

7. Can you speak up?

   After rocking out to Imagine Dragons on Tuesday night, our ears were ringing and we struggled to hear each other at the DevOps Zone at the expo on Wednesday. We had to keep asking each other to speak up. We live tough lives. ;-)

8. What’s an easy way for me to try out IBM DevOps Services for myself?

   We created a workshop for dev@Impact that walks you through the basics of forking an existing application, deploying it manually to BlueMix, making a simple change to the application using the web IDE, and then setting up automatic deployments to BlueMix whenever you push a change to your repository. (I know that sounds like a lot of stuff, but you can do all of that in about 15 minutes!) You can try out the workshop for yourself here.

   We also have some fantastic tutorials on our site! You can access them from the Help menu on IBM DevOps Services, or you can click on the links below.

   • Getting Started with BlueMix and DevOps Services using Node.js
   • Getting Started with BlueMix and DevOps Services using Java
   • Setting up Eclipse, Git, and RTC Desktop Clients to access DevOps Services
   • Developing BlueMix applications in Node.js with the DevOps Services Web IDE
   • Developing BlueMix applications in Java with Eclipse and DevOps Services

   If you have any questions about IBM DevOps Services, you can ask them in our forum.

9. Where is IBM DevOps Services featured during Impact?

   IBM DevOps Services popped up all over Impact at keynotes, sessions, and workshops. We were featured front and center during Monday’s general session keynote:
   

   We were also featured during the cloud track keynote:
   

10. Wasn’t Kevin Spacey an exciting speaker?

    Yes! (1) Kevin knew he was the bait to get us to attend an early morning general session after a late night partying to Imagine Dragons. (2) Kevin surprised us all when he rattled off a string of techno-jargon and shouted, “That’s right–I know your f***ing terms!” (3) Kevin presented a relevant and engaging message that technology is empowering the rule breakers, the consumers, and the risk takers.

    

I had a really fun time hanging out with the rest of the DevOps Services team in Las Vegas. You can find my photos from the event in the JazzHub Facebook album. See you next year!

Lauren Schaefer
Growth Hacking Engineer, IBM DevOps Services
Social Media Lead, Jazz.net and IBM DevOps Services