The technology startup ecosystem is thriving, and a DevOps movement sits at the center of a universe that revolves around data analytics and cloud management tools.

In partnership with Amazon Web Services Inc., SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio theCUBE kicked off the latest in the AWS Startup Showcase Series, “New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Analytics, and Cloud Management Tools” today. The opening session focused on news from AWS, reassessment of the developer experience from a noted technologist, and discussion of the cloud industry based on a white paper recently released by a prominent venture capital firm.

Earlier this month, AWS announced plans to hold a live re:Invent 2021 conference in Las Vegas at the end of November. The event will provide AWS with an opportunity to unveil new services and products in support of startups, the DevOps community and the vast customer base it has drawn to the cloud.

“As these startups grow, they’re starting to lean into the power of the cloud,” said Jeff Barr, vice president and chief evangelist at AWS. “They don’t have to think about what’s going on behind the scenes; the infrastructure meets their demand.”

Barr spoke with John Furrier, Lisa Martin and Dave Vellante, co-hosts of theCUBE, during the event’s opening session. Technologist Emily Freeman (pictured) and Jerry Chen, partner at Greylock Partners, also appeared in the segment as part of the Startup Showcase event. (* Disclosure below.)

New thinking in DevOps

In addition to hearing from 14 startup companies in the AWS ecosystem, today’s event provided an opportunity to assess the current state of the DevOps community. Freeman, author of “DevOps for Dummies” and co-curator of “97 Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know,” called for new thinking in DevOps based on the outmoded nature of the software development life cycle, or SDLC, which has been in use since the 1960s.

“DevOps is an increasingly outmoded solution to a previous problem,” Freeman said. “I believe that the era of DevOps is fading.”

What Freeman proposes instead is a new framework that encompasses the key DevOps responsibilities for architecting, developing, automating, deploying and operating to better reflect the iterative nature of development work.

“It should embody the roles engineers take on and the considerations they must make along the way,” Freeman said. “My mission with this is to challenge the status quo. Software developing is an ever-changing complex dance, and we need a modern model for this modern era.”

Startups storm the walls

The onset of the modern era has also been dramatically transformed by the influence of cloud computing. A new whitepaper from Greylock Partners, released last month, provides a comprehensive and interactive map of the cloud ecosystem with a focus on how startup companies can build sustainable business models and mount an “assault” on the cloud incumbent castle walls.

“There are 500-plus startups competing against the cloud vendors,” Chen said. “You are going to see more of these companies storm the castle.”

Greylock’s interactive report, “Castles in the Cloud,” mapped 184 startups and 98 unicorns. It identified 173 submarkets and categorized over 500 services offered by the three largest cloud providers – AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

For venture firms such as Greylock, this creates an opportunity for startups it is funding to leverage a bounty of resources, create disruption and foster new technologies. One such firm in the Greylock portfolio is Rockset Inc., which is one of the companies featured in the AWS Startup Showcase. Rockset provides a real-time analytics database that allows users to rapidly convert NoSQL data to SQL almost instantaneously.

“The beauty of the cloud is this fat, long tail of services for developers,” Chen noted. “Even the big guys like Snowflake have created a wake behind them for companies like Rockset.”

The AWS Startup Showcase offered an opportunity for viewers to see what new and emerging technologies may be coming down the road. Whether the featured startups “storm the castle walls” as envisioned by Greylock remains to be seen, but change is constant, and it is a sure bet that the current tech landscape will look different one year from now.

“There’s new technological models coming up in the cloud. There are going to be new winners and they are going to look different,” Furrier said. “Who’s going to challenge Amazon? We’ll see how the horses come in.”

Watch the complete opening session video below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Startup Showcase: New Breakthroughs in DevOps, Analytics, and Cloud Management Tools event. (* Disclosure: AWS sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE