The TL;DR
GitLab is a somewhat contrarian take on DevOps: it’s basically one giant tool for literally anything you’d want to do relating to building and deploying software.
- DevOps spans the gamut in software, from source control to performance monitoring
- Traditionally, teams have used different tools for each part of the DevOps pipeline
- GitLab brings the entire process together with a single platform for DevOps
- Product lines include source control, issue tracking, CI/CD, and monitoring
GitLab is a very non-traditional company – beyond their unusual approach to the market, they operate completely remotely with team members across 60 countries, publicly publish their internal guidelines, and are open source. They also IPOd in 2021, and have grown to over 50 million registered users with more than half of Fortune 100 companies as customers [1] From Gitlab's most recent 10-K filing: We have more than 50 million registered users. – so it's an organization worth understanding.
