CloudBees has established itself as the enterprise standard for Jenkins-based CI/CD, serving more than 500 of the world's largest organizations with its comprehensive DevOps platform. For organizations looking to scale their continuous integration and delivery practices, CloudBees offers the security, governance, and enterprise features that open-source Jenkins alone cannot provide. But as enterprises increasingly grapple with mainframe modernization and the complexities of regulated industries, the question arises: is CloudBees the right fit for every enterprise scenario?
To create this CloudBees review, I've analyzed the platform extensively. I believe it's the ideal choice if:
- You need enterprise-grade Jenkins with centralized management
- You want comprehensive DevOps capabilities through extensive integrations
- You require sophisticated release orchestration and feature management
- You have dedicated DevOps teams to manage plugin ecosystems
- You're primarily working with cloud-native and distributed systems
However, CloudBees might not be the best choice if:
- You have significant mainframe presence requiring specialized CI/CD
- You need an out-of-the-box solution without plugin dependencies
- You're in a highly regulated industry requiring simplified compliance workflows
- You prefer modular customization over plugin-based extensibility
- You want predictable costs without per-user scaling complexities
In this case, you should consider Kobee: an out-of-the-box enterprise CI/CD platform purpose-built for mainframe environments and regulated industries. While CloudBees excels with its Jenkins foundation and plugin ecosystem, Kobee provides complete CI/CD functionality through its modular Phases architecture, making it ideal for organizations that need mainframe capabilities and regulatory compliance without the overhead of managing complex plugin dependencies.
If you're looking for a CI/CD solution that specializes in mainframe modernization and regulated environments, you can learn more about Kobee here.
Table of contents:
- What is CloudBees?
- CloudBees Pros & Cons
- CloudBees Review: How it Works & Key Features
- Where CloudBees Falls Short
- Top CloudBees Alternative for Mainframe Environments: Kobee
- CloudBees or Kobee: Comparison Summary
- Final Verdict
What is CloudBees?
CloudBees was founded in early 2010 by Sacha Labourey and François Déchery, both veterans of the enterprise software industry with extensive experience from JBoss and Red Hat. The company's trajectory changed significantly when it acquired InfraDNA later that year, bringing in Kohsuke Kawaguchi, the creator of Jenkins. This acquisition positioned Jenkins at the core of CloudBees' strategy, transforming the company from a Platform-as-a-Service provider into the leading enterprise Jenkins company.
Today, CloudBees serves as a comprehensive customer platform for software delivery, extending far beyond its Jenkins roots. The platform encompasses:
- CloudBees CI for continuous integration
- CloudBees CD/RO for release orchestration
- CloudBees Feature Management for progressive delivery
- CloudBees Compliance for security and governance.
With over 500 employees and more than $150 million in annual recurring revenue, the company has achieved profitability while serving major enterprises like Salesforce, HSBC, and Adobe.
CloudBees positions itself as the solution for organizations that need to manage complex software delivery at scale. Its ideal customers are large enterprises with mature DevOps practices, companies transitioning from traditional development to continuous delivery, and organizations requiring enterprise-grade security, compliance, and governance features that open-source Jenkins cannot provide.
CloudBees Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✅ Deep expertise as primary Jenkins contributor | ❌ High cost can be prohibitive for smaller organizations |
| ✅ Comprehensive end-to-end automation capabilities | ❌ Complexity and steep learning curve |
| ✅ Enterprise-grade security and compliance features | ❌ Dependency on Jenkins architecture |
| ✅ Extensive integration ecosystem (900+ integrations) | ❌ Integration challenges with legacy systems |
| ✅ Centralized management through Operations Center | ❌ Plugin management overhead |
| ✅ Strong vendor support and professional services | ❌ Performance issues reported by some users |
CloudBees Review: How it Works & Key Features
CloudBees CI: Enterprise Jenkins at Scale
CloudBees CI builds upon open-source Jenkins to provide an enterprise-grade continuous integration solution. The platform extends Jenkins with features specifically designed for organizations managing dozens or hundreds of development teams.
The CloudBees Jenkins Operations Center (CJOC) serves as the central management hub, allowing administrators to manage multiple Jenkins controllers from a single interface.
This addresses one of the biggest challenges with scaling Jenkins: managing numerous independent instances. Through CJOC, administrators can provision new controllers for teams, apply consistent configurations across all instances, manage plugins centrally, and monitor the health of the entire CI infrastructure.
The platform includes the CloudBees Assurance Program, which provides a curated set of verified plugins tested for compatibility, stability, and security.
The Beekeeper Upgrade Assistant automates plugin updates, reducing the administrative burden of maintaining hundreds of plugins across multiple controllers. For high availability, CloudBees CI offers active-active clustering where multiple controller replicas run simultaneously, eliminating single points of failure.
CloudBees CD/RO: Orchestrating Complex Releases
CloudBees CD/RO provides enterprise-grade release automation and orchestration capabilities. The platform uses a model-driven approach where applications, environments, and deployment processes are defined as reusable models rather than scripts.
Users create around three key models:
- Application models: Define components and artifacts
- Environment models: Specify deployment targets
- Pipeline models: Orchestrate the release process
This abstraction allows the same deployment process to work across development, testing, and production environments without modification. The platform supports various deployment strategies including blue-green deployments, canary releases, and rolling deployments.
Release orchestration capabilities extend beyond single applications.
CloudBees CD/RO can manage dependencies across multiple applications and pipelines, coordinate releases involving hundreds of components, and provide a unified view of the entire release portfolio. The platform includes approval gates, automated rollback capabilities, and comprehensive audit trails for compliance requirements.
Feature Management and Progressive Delivery
CloudBees Feature Management enables teams to decouple code deployment from feature release through sophisticated feature flagging. The platform provides SDKs for various programming languages and frameworks, allowing developers to wrap new features in flags that can be toggled without redeploying code.
The system supports percentage-based rollouts for gradual feature releases, audience targeting based on user attributes, A/B testing and experimentation frameworks, and scheduled feature releases.
Configuration can be managed as code through GitHub integration, allowing feature flag configurations to be version-controlled alongside application code. The platform includes tools for identifying and cleaning up stale flags, addressing the technical debt that often accumulates with feature flag usage.
CloudBees Compliance: Continuous Security and Governance
CloudBees Compliance provides real-time compliance and risk analysis throughout the software delivery lifecycle. The platform integrates with existing security tools, translating their findings into actionable intelligence for compliance measurement.
Key capabilities include pre-built policy frameworks for standards like SOC 2, PCI, and ISO 27001, a low-code policy engine for creating custom compliance checks, and continuous assessment of code, binaries, and infrastructure.
The platform externalizes compliance checks from the CI/CD pipeline, making pipelines less brittle while ensuring governance. Real-time audit access provides auditors with on-demand evidence collection, transforming compliance from a periodic scramble into a continuous process.
Where CloudBees Falls Short
While CloudBees excels as a comprehensive DevOps platform, several limitations become apparent for certain enterprise scenarios. These constraints reveal a platform optimized for modern, distributed systems rather than legacy enterprise environments.
- Plugin Ecosystem Complexity: The strength of CloudBees' Jenkins foundation becomes a weakness when managing enterprise complexity. Organizations often find themselves managing hundreds of plugins across multiple controllers, each with its own compatibility matrix and update cycle.
Even with the CloudBees Assurance Program, plugin conflicts and unexpected behaviors remain common pain points. This creates a significant maintenance burden that requires dedicated Jenkins expertise. - Legacy System Integration Challenges: Despite its enterprise focus, CloudBees struggles with legacy system integration, particularly mainframe environments.
The platform's architecture assumes modern development practices and toolchains. Organizations with significant mainframe presence find themselves building complex workarounds or maintaining separate CI/CD pipelines for legacy systems. - Cost and Scaling Complexity: CloudBees' pricing model can become prohibitively expensive as organizations scale.
The per-user pricing across multiple products (CI, CD/RO, Feature Management, Compliance) means costs escalate quickly. A medium-sized enterprise might find itself paying for CI controllers, CD/RO licenses, and Feature Management seats separately, leading to unpredictable and substantial expenses. - Steep Learning Curve: The platform's comprehensive capabilities come with significant complexity.
New teams require extensive training to navigate the various products, understand plugin interactions, and manage the Jenkins ecosystem effectively. This learning curve is particularly challenging for organizations without existing Jenkins expertise.
These limitations reflect CloudBees' optimization for modern DevOps practices and cloud-native architectures. For organizations with mainframe systems, regulated industry requirements, or those seeking simpler out-of-the-box solutions, these constraints create clear gaps that alternative platforms can address.
Top CloudBees Alternative for Mainframe Environments: Kobee
Kobee addresses CloudBees' limitations by providing an out-of-the-box enterprise CI/CD platform specifically designed for mainframe environments and regulated industries. Where CloudBees relies on plugins and Jenkins architecture, Kobee delivers complete functionality through its innovative Phases architecture.
Phases Architecture: Modular Customization Without Plugins
At the heart of Kobee's approach is its Phases architecture.
Phases are modular, parameter-driven containers that perform specific CI/CD actions, contrasting sharply with the monolithic scripts common in traditional CI/CD tools. This architecture provides three types of Phases:
- Core Phases provide essential CI/CD functionalities like code retrieval, tagging, and artifact management.
- Solution Phases offer certified, pre-built components for specific environments, with mainframe built-in functionality for IBM z/OS and Oracle ODI.
- Custom Phases allow organizations to create their own components using familiar tools like Ant, Maven, or Gradle.
The key advantage is parameter-driven customization through Kobee's GUI.
Users can modify Phase behavior by adjusting parameters without touching underlying scripts. This hierarchical configuration system allows settings at machine, environment, and Phase levels, providing granular control without scripting expertise.
Just like Jenkins allows you to write custom plugins, Kobee lets you create custom Phases when your specific needs aren't covered by the standard catalog.
Purpose-Built for Mainframe Modernization
Kobee excels where CloudBees struggles: mainframe CI/CD. The platform serves as a drop-in replacement for legacy SCM tools like ChangeMan, Panvalet, and Endevor, enabling three modernization strategies.
- The "Revitalize" strategy provides in-place modernization by replacing legacy SCM tools while maintaining existing mainframe infrastructure.
- The "Balance" approach manages hybrid environments, orchestrating both mainframe and distributed systems from a single control point.
- The "Transition" strategy facilitates gradual migration away from mainframes while keeping both platforms synchronized.
With Kobee, developers can use Git for version control, IDZ or VS Code for editing, and modern CI/CD practices, all while working with mainframe code.
With optional support for IBM tools like DBB and Wazi Deploy, it seamlessly integrates with existing mainframe toolchains. The platform includes integration with IBM Wazi as a Service, enabling cloud-based z/OS development and testing.
Kobee also comes with a separate application where you can set and customize every detail of your mainframe configuration using an easy-to-use GUI. Again, no scripting required!
Complete Out-of-the-Box Functionality
Unlike CloudBees' plugin-dependent approach, Kobee provides all necessary CI/CD features as built-in functionality. This includes version control integration with Git, Subversion, TFVC, and CVS, issue tracking connections to Jira, Azure DevOps, and MicroFocus ALM, and automated build and deployment capabilities across platforms.
The platform's toolchain orchestration capabilities allow it to manage diverse development tools from a central point. Every tool integration is native, eliminating the plugin compatibility issues that plague Jenkins-based solutions.
This out-of-the-box completeness means organizations can implement CI/CD immediately without evaluating, installing, and maintaining dozens of plugins.
Designed for Regulated Industries
Kobee specifically addresses the needs of regulated industries through built-in compliance features.
The platform provides detailed audit trails of all build and deploy actions, traceable from code commit through production deployment. Approval gates and notifications are core features, not add-ons requiring additional configuration.
Integration with enterprise security systems like Active Directory, LDAP, and Kerberos ensures Kobee fits within existing security frameworks. The platform enables compliance with standards including CMM, ITIL, Six Sigma, and Sarbanes-Oxley through its standardized, auditable processes.
CloudBees or Kobee: Comparison Summary
| Aspect | CloudBees | Kobee |
|---|---|---|
| Target Audience | General enterprise DevOps teams | Mainframe shops, large and regulated enterprises |
| Core Architecture | Jenkins-based with plugins | Phases-based with built-in functionality |
| Customization Approach | Plugin ecosystem (900+ integrations) | Modular Phases with GUI configuration |
| Mainframe Support | Limited, requires workarounds | Mainframe built-in functionality |
| Learning Curve | ⭐⭐ Steep, requires Jenkins expertise |
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Intuitive |
| Out-of-Box Completeness | ⭐⭐⭐ Requires plugin configuration |
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Complete CI/CD functionality |
| (Starting) Price | Free tier available Team: $30/user/month |
Enterprise: €99.95/user/month (with a €25,000 annual minimum) |
| Deployment Model | Cloud-native focus | Platform-independent (mainframe, distributed) |
| Compliance Features | Separate Compliance product | Built-in audit and approval workflows |
| Best For | Modern, cloud-native applications | Mainframe modernization, regulated industries |
Final Verdict
The choice between CloudBees and Kobee ultimately depends on your enterprise's specific infrastructure and regulatory requirements.
Choose CloudBees if:
- You need the extensive Jenkins plugin ecosystem
- Your organization primarily develops cloud-native applications
- You have the resources to invest in both the platform and the expertise to manage it effectively
- You need sophisticated feature management and complex release orchestration across modern architectures
It's ideal for enterprises with dedicated DevOps teams who can manage plugin complexity and want access to the broadest possible integration ecosystem.
Power your cloud-native pipelines with CloudBees.
Choose Kobee if:
- You operate in highly regulated industries
- You require built-in compliance and audit capabilities
- Your enterprise has a significant mainframe presence
- You need complete CI/CD functionality without plugin dependencies
- You want to unify mainframe and distributed development under one platform
It's the clear choice for organizations seeking to modernize legacy systems while maintaining operational stability.
The intuitive Phases architecture makes it accessible to teams without deep DevOps expertise while still providing the customization enterprises demand.
Unlock mainframe power with seamless CI/CD by choosing Kobee.
Both platforms serve enterprise CI/CD needs effectively, but from different angles. CloudBees provides the flexibility and ecosystem for modern DevOps practices, while Kobee delivers the specialized capabilities and simplicity required for mainframe environments and regulated industries. Your choice should align with your infrastructure reality and compliance requirements rather than following industry trends.
Feeling boxed in by CloudBees’ pricing and complexity?
CloudBees’ pricing and complexity add overhead. Kobee delivers enterprise power with transparency and less cost .
About the author
Hello, my name is René De Vleeschauwer.
Throughout my career, I have been actively engaged in developing enterprise software. For the past 18 years, I have led the development of Kobee, an open CI/CD and DevOps framework that has been highly regarded in regulated enterprises.
Do you have any questions? Just ask me!