Gartner’s market guide for cloud development environments: volume 1

Talia Moyal Head of Outbound Product at Gitpod

Sep 21, 2024

Gartner released its first Market Guide for Cloud Development Environments (CDEs).

Key findings:

• Engineering leaders see productivity boosts with CDEs

• AI adoption in development doubles to 32%

• 71% of engineers work remotely, fueling demand for remote development

• 60-70% of regulated industries are transitioning to CDEs

Here are the basics of what you need to know!

Key value drivers for adopting CDEs

There are three key initiatives that Gartner cites as drivers for CDE adoption:

• Productivity

• Security

• Collaboration

How CDEs improve developer productivity

CDEs change the way developers work. Gartner polled both users and non-users of CDEs and reports that 36% of those engineering leaders have seen increased developer productivity with CDEs. This is largely through automating repetitive tasks and reducing infrastructure friction, and shows that CDEs are just at the beginning of adoption.

At Gitpod, our customers report even higher productivity gains, saving up to 800 hours per year in onboarding time alone. This improvement comes from the ‘one-click’ development environments that Gitpod provides. Pre-configured environments come equipped with all tools, dependencies, and access rights, allowing developers to start work on any project instantly.

How CDEs improve supply chain security 

CDEs are a helpful tool in managing security and compliance policies centrally. With Gitpod, this also includes significantly mitigate supply-chain attack risks and reduces attack surface area through:

• Automated dependency management: Gitpod implements centralized, version-controlled dependency management, ensuring all developers use vetted, up-to-date libraries and tools.

• Ephemeral environment protection: Gitpod’s workspaces are short-lived and automatically destroyed after periods of inactivity. This ephemeral nature prevents the persistence of malware, as each new session starts with a clean, uncompromised environment, neutralizing long-term threats.

• Enhanced code exfiltration safeguards: By providing single-purpose, temporary environments, Gitpod reduces the risk of source code theft. Code remains on secure servers rather than local machines, and access can be instantly revoked, making it substantially harder for bad actors to exfiltrate sensitive intellectual property.

Kingland, a provider of enterprise data management software for regulated industries, uses Gitpod to improve security in development workflows by leveraging ephemeral environments to mitigates the risk of malware and code exfiltration. This approach is particularly crucial for Kingland, as they work with sensitive data in banking, insurance, and accounting sectors. Patrick, an Enterprise Architect at Kingland, emphasizes that Gitpod allows them to ‘guarantee every engineer starts with a fresh environment that is safe and free of malware.’\ \ Gartner states that by 2028, 30% of regulated industries will mandate CDEs for security and compliance use cases. This trend is already gaining momentum, with 60-70% of organizations in banking, insurance, and healthcare planning to transition from local workstations to CDEs.

There is also a notable shift from traditional Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) to CDEs for development work. At Gitpod, we’re seeing this transition accelerate among our enterprise customers who see that Gitpod not only improves security but also enhances productivity and developer experience compared to VDIs.

The future of CDEs 

Gartner predicts us to see continued alignment with platform engineering goals and CDEs. This is due to the connection between improving developer productivity and security postures, while reducing infrastructure friction. At Gitpod, we’re seeing this trend firsthand. CDEs are emerging as a primary driver for platform adoption, often outperforming Internal Developer Portals (IDPs) in terms of immediate impact.

Gartner also sees the integration of AI-assisted technologies as a key factor in shaping the future of CDEs. According to Stack Overflow, the percentage of developers with access to AI-assisted tools has doubled to approximately 33% between 2022 and 2024. As a result, CDEs will become crucial distribution channels for AI-powered development tools, enabling organizations to provide secure, controlled access.

What this means for enterprises

The recent Gartner guide confirms what we are seeing: cloud development environments are becoming indispensable for modern software development. For enterprises considering CDEs, we offer the following recommendations:

• Security and compliance: Evaluate CDEs not just for developer productivity, but as a crucial component of your security and compliance strategy.

• Holistic developer experience: Look beyond basic features to consider a comprehensive developer experience and seamless workflow integration.

• AI and ML support: Leverage CDEs to support your rollout of artificial intelligence initiatives like code assistants.

• Total cost analysis: Consider the total cost of ownership, including digging into sneaky day 2 costs associated with maintaining some CDEs on the market.

At Gitpod we offer an enterprises a solution that combines:

• Top-tier security measures through our self-hosted offerings

• An unparalleled developer experience

• Flexibility to support diverse development needs

• Minimal overhead and no sneaky day 2 costs

Try us for free today!