Development organizations face an infinite supply of open-source tools in today’s tech ecosystem. There are a thousand new open-source projects a day, with 10,000 new versions and 14 new releases each year, according to Matt Howard (pictured), executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Sonatype Inc.

The supply is massive, and consumption is equally incredible. Last year alone, there were 52 billion download requests from Maven Central for Java binaries and more than 15 billion requests for npm packages in the JavaScript ecosystem, he added.

“So, we are basically dealing with a world where software is no longer a marginal cost of doing business; it is the business,” Howard said. His organization provides development lifecycle for enterprises, helping them to make the best choices for their businesses.

To further discuss software’s role in business, as well as why automating processes is the only way to stay competitive, Howard spoke to John Furrier (@furrier) and Peter Burris (@plburris), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during this week’s Cisco DevNet Create event in San Francisco, California. (* Disclosure below.)

Automating processes to scale innovation

How can you innovate fast enough with software to remain competitive? That is a tremendous pressure on organizations, and it’s driving transformational change like DevOps, according to Howard.

“As the demand for speed continues to grow, it only increases the appetite for open source. And it creates opportunities for organizations like ours to basically automate how that open-source innovation happens,” Howard said.

He gave an example of a process inside a large financial organization, involving a developer who requests approval to use an open-source component. How long does that process take, how many people are involved, and how many dollars? If those answers are onerous, does the process have to be that way? Or can the organization create and define policy and build a firewall that automatically governs the flow of open source into the development lifecycle, with no human intervention, at pace?

That’s the idea of what Howard’s organization does when they talk about scaling open-source innovation early, everywhere and across the entire development lifecycle. It starts at the perimeter: The moment the developer requests the open-source component for use, that request has to be automated.

“An organization can’t afford to take three months to approve it; [the developer] needs it now,” Howard stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Cisco DevNet Create 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Cisco DevNet Create. Neither Cisco DevNet nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE