Jenkins has often been called the “engine of DevOps,” and in recent years through the aid of plug-ins, the hub for a continuous delivery pipeline.  It’s explained as an automation tool, and the principal software component around which an organization’s DevOps strategy may be based.

Yet at its core, it is essentially an automation server.  Its extensive use by IT professionals for data center automation and infrastructure management is significantly under-reported.  Indeed, from the perspective of many data center managers, Jenkins is a movement that they started, and whose uptake by software developers is on account of their persistence.

So Jenkins should be something these two departments of IT have in common with one another.  Is the extension of the annual Jenkins World conference into DevOps World an indication that these groups may finally be seeing eye-to-eye — and in the same conference hall?