We commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ study for CloudBees, which was completed in March 2024. The goal of this study was to quantify and understand the impact our continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) software could have on enabling customers to accelerate software delivery. We know our customers achieve amazing results (spoiler alert: We were not wrong!) - we see it every day. We were interested to see what results Forrester could uncover and quantify.
We reached out to six CloudBees customers across several industries to see if they were willing to be interviewed by Forrester. CloudBees was not involved in the interviews, the Forrester analysis of the data collected, or the content of the final study. The study is a truly objective analysis of the results customers are experiencing with CloudBees software.
The Forrester Consulting findings, The Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) of CloudBees, offers a lens through which to view the potential financial benefits of CloudBees. Using a detailed framework, Forrester's analysis delves into the return on investment (ROI) that enterprises could achieve by using CloudBees for CI/CD.
The comprehensive study revealed significant insights. Forrester aggregated the interviewees’ experiences into a single composite organization, represented by a large financial services organization with 3,000 developers and revenues of $25 billion per year.
Core Findings from the TEI Study
The customers interviewed by Forrester said that prior to CloudBees, they struggled with:
Lack of stability and scalability in their software delivery processes.
Frequent outages, idling developers for hours at a time.
Routine processes, such as requesting predeployment approvals or creating credentials for new users, that were time-consuming manual tasks.
Siloed teams, with each team using its own processes and customized tools.
Finally, lack of standardization created governance challenges.
Quantifiable Benefits
Improved stability of the software delivery pipeline, drastically reducing the frequency, duration, and impact of system outages. After one year, lost developer hours were reduced by 99%, saving more than $4.5 million. Over three years, this was worth more than $10.6 million.
"After the investment in CloudBees, the interviewees said their outages were reduced to near zero, and with many common processes automated, their organizational efficiency and productivity skyrocketed..."
- quote from The Total Economic Impact of CloudBees study
Automated predeployment preparation and approval processes, which used to involve several people for several hours for each of the 20,000-plus deployments per year. This reduced the organization’s annual predeployment costs by 70% in Year 1. Over three years, this is worth $27.5 million in value to the composite organization.
“Our average time for app deployment saw a 2x to 3x decrease under CloudBees,” said the director of DevOps at a hospitality company. “That’s a big chunk of money, and those are dollars that have been reinvested into the company.”
– director of DevOps at a hospitality company
Other unquantified benefits that provided value were enhanced product quality, increased flexibility and innovation, better user experience, and improved security processes.
“[CloudBees’ efficiencies allow me to] move away from day-to-day operational roles and focus more on governance. If I can allow individual dev teams to improve their own metrics like frequency of releases, then my team can shift to higher-value-add projects, which for us include things like improving our risk posture.”
–head of DevOps, cloud, and SRE, financial services company
Significant benefits over three years: Savings of $38.2 million versus costs of $7.3 million, adding up to a net present value of $30.9 million, an ROI of 426%.
Post-CloudBees implementation, organizations witnessed near-elimination of outages and a surge in operational efficiency and productivity. Automation of common processes facilitated this change, supporting growth and an increase in software deployment activities. One interviewee commented:
“There used to be a very involved, manual process of getting changes approved…Every day, 100-plus people joined a call that lasted for an hour. Now with CloudBees CD integration, we can initiate changes and get those approvals automatically. Right there, it’s a cost savings and a better user experience overall.”
- director of DevOps, hospitality company
In summary, the Forrester TEI study delineates strong financial and operational gains for CloudBees customers, showing the software's capacity to redefine enterprise software delivery while providing significant ROI and enhanced operational efficiency.