The Tough as Boots Cowboy of DevOps
Recently I was involved in migrating a CI/CD setup into Jenkins. We didn’t spend too much time searching for alternatives since we knew many of today’s tools are heavily focused on Kubernetes. We needed something flexible yet reliable for our unique use case, and the choice was clear: Jenkins. Honestly, I’m not surprised Jenkins has stuck around well into this post-cloud-native era (buzzwords and all). The first time I worked with Jenkins was back in early 2014 as an intern. Ten years later, Jenkins is still standing strong. Here are a few reasons why I think it’s managed to stay so relevant over the years.
Wide Plugin Ecosystem: Jenkins consists of one of the largest plugin ecosystems of any CI/CD tool, supporting over 1,000 plugins that enable integration with a vast array of DevOps tools and services. You want to set a reminder to feed your dog while you are at work? I’m sure Jenkins got a plugin for that too. This versatility allows Jenkins to fit into almost any tech stack, from integrating with version control systems like Git and GitHub to linking with build tools, testing frameworks, deployment platforms, and monitoring services. Its ability to plug into various aspects of software development and deployment pipelines makes it indispensable for teams with diverse or highly specific tooling requirements. This plugin-based architecture also encourages community contributions, continually expanding Jenkins’ capability and relevance to new tools and trends in software development.
Community and Longevity: As one of the oldest CI/CD tools, Jenkins has been around since forever and is widely adopted across industries. This long standing presence has created a large, active community of developers and users who contribute to and maintain Jenkins’ codebase, as well as provide support through documentation, and guides. This maturity translates into stability, reliability, and extensive online resources and tutorials, making it a safe choice for organisations that need robust, time tested tools. Newer engineers entering DevOps often find a huge amount of learning materials, troubleshooting guides, and records in various forums, which lowers the barrier to effective use and creates sustained interest and growth in the Jenkins ecosystem.
Scalability and Flexibility: Jenkins scales to support both small projects and large enterprise level deployments, making it a good fit for teams with varied project sizes. It can handle distributed builds, where jobs run across multiple machines, enabling efficient resource use and faster job completion. Jenkins also supports on-premises installations, which is critical for industries that prioritise data privacy and security or have infrastructure constraints that necessitate internal hosting. With multi-cloud and hybrid strategies becoming more prevalent, Jenkins’ flexibility across environments from bare metal servers to Kubernetes and cloud instances enables organisations to adapt to shifting infrastructure without changing a lot in their CI/CD tools.
Broad Adoption in Legacy and Modern Environments: Jenkins’ early adoption has led to widespread use across industries, making it a staple in companies with legacy infrastructure. Its ongoing relevance, however, is also due to its adaptability to newer, cloud-native practices. For example, Jenkins X, a sub-project of Jenkins, focuses on Kubernetes and provides an opinionated workflow for cloud native CI/CD. This evolution makes Jenkins appealing to both traditional enterprises and modern, cloud based startups. Companies using both legacy and cloud native applications often find Jenkins’ hybrid compatibility very compelling, as it bridges the gap between older infrastructure and newer, containerised environments.
Scriptability and Automation Support: Jenkins is deeply scriptable, allowing teams to automate complex workflows beyond what most modern GUI based tools offer. The Groovy based Domain-Specific Language (DSL) used in Jenkins Pipelines enables users to define pipelines-as-code, which fosters consistency, repeatability, and version control in CI/CD processes. This is highly valued by DevOps teams focused on Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles and who want pipelines that are modular, versioned, and tested. Jenkins’ emphasis on automation also makes it a natural fit for teams looking to create reusable components or automated tasks that can run without manual intervention, from triggering tests to deploying code across multiple environments.
Custom Solutions and Existing Investments: Many organisations have invested significant time and resources into building custom Jenkins workflows, making it challenging and costly to migrate to newer CI/CD tools. These custom workflows often include specialised plugins, tailored pipelines, and integrations with other systems within the company. Jenkins’ flexibility means that it can be tailored to meet very specific requirements, and it’s common for these configurations to be highly integrated into an organisation’s overall DevOps strategy. For organisations with complex systems, moving away from Jenkins can be a substantial undertaking that disrupts workflows, which is why Jenkins often remains in use even when alternative solutions are available.
While newer CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and CircleCI offer simpler setups and integrations with cloud-native environments, Jenkins remains highly valuable in hybrid setups, for intricate workflows, or in scenarios where customisability and control are very important.
