GoCD vs. Sonatype Platform

Previously, our team used Jenkins. However, since it's a shared deployment resource we don't have admin access. We tried GoCD as it's open source and we really like. We set up our deployment pipeline to run whenever codes are merged to master, run the unit test and revert back if it doesn't pass. Once it's deployed to the staging environment, we can simply do 1-click to deploy the appropriate version to production. We use this to deploy to an on-prem server and also AWS. Some deployment pipelines use custom Powershell script for.Net application, some others use Bash script to execute the docker push and cloud formation template to build elastic beanstalk.

Incentivized

- Guidance on remediation is very good - Vulnerability detection is very good - Support is very good - Ability to ask PMs/POs open questions at Office Hours every month is very good - Support for languages is lacking (TIOBE Index Top20) - Some features are un-neededly hidden and make the usage more complex then it needs to be

• Pipeline-as-Code works really well. All our pipelines are defined in yml files, which are checked into SCM.
• The ability to link multiple pipelines together is really cool. Later pipelines can declare a dependency to pick up the build artifacts of earlier ones.
• Agents definition is really great. We can define multiple different kinds of environments to best suit our diverse build systems.

Incentivized

• Nexus firewall is a great feature enabled for all our proxy repositories which are used to download the third-party opensource packages.
• Nexus IQ is integrated with build stage to analyze the component against evaluation policy. This helps to figure out the application security standards.
• Nexus IQ is also having a feature to scan container images before it uploads to our private repository. This is great feature for container platforms.

• UI can be improved
• Location for settings can be re-arranged
• API for setting up pipeline

Incentivized

• Support on the end of life lifecycle of known open source components that are going end of life, or already went end of life
• Support for emerging infrastructure as code frameworks
• Support for native/ default retention, archiving and clean up policies for hosted repositories

Sonatype supports more than 200 dev(s). It proves with the repository to store the artifacts. Allows for governance of open source software used by the different teams. It is used by security teams to scan for vulnerabilities in software(s) and in the deployed containers. It helps ensure code quality.

Incentivized

Overall experience is great with the Platform; however, I see some opportunity with upgrading the platform as it is missing with data of historical scans to allow reviewer to get view of trend how the application/product development team is considering fixing the issues.

Incentivized

Extremely good

Sonatype products are great value as I said but a few areas like how products use underlying resources in order to make it further lightweight, is something I would like them to consider.

Monthly touchpoints with Sinisa has been very valuable.

Incentivized

easy to implement and performing the scans via automations as well

Incentivized

GoCD is easier to setup, but harder to customize at runtime. There's no way to trigger a pipeline with custom parameters.

Jenkins is more flexible at runtime. You can define multiple user-provided parameters so when user needs to trigger a build, there's a form for him/her to input the parameters.

Incentivized

Out of other products we evaluated before choosing Sonatype, the later looked far more user friendly, easy to understand and work with. This was key for us, as the tool needs to be used by many engineers that don't have security as their main focus. Having a tool that is easy to understand and work with, makes the process of evaluating open source dependencies much easier and appealing for developers.

Incentivized

Great value for money

Everything is very good except a little concern regarding large scale docker usage.

Very good

• ROI has been good since it's open source
• Settings.xml need to be backed up periodically. It contains all the settings for your pipelines! We accidentally deleted before and we have to restore and re-create several missing pipelines
• More straight forward use of API and allows filtering e.g., pull all pipelines triggered after this date

Incentivized

• Sonatype's centralized management of artifacts have made it very easy for developers to share code in an efficient manner.
• Sonatype's low false positive rate has made it easier to convince developers to remediate vulnerabilities
• Sonatype's archaic architecture has made it more expensive to manage than it could be.