A side-by-side comparison of Azure DevOps and GitHub

Collaboration is a crucial element in software development; having the right collaboration tools can make a difference and boost the entire team’s productivity. Microsoft introduced its Application Lifecycle Management product with Team Foundation Server (aka TFS) on March 16th, 2006. This software had to be installed on a server within your network and had a user-based license. To reduce the complexity of setting up and maintaining the server, Microsoft released Visual Studio Online–an Azure-based, server-hosted version of TFS. Microsoft manages and administers the servers as well as taking care of backups. To clarify its commitment to agile and DevOps, Microsoft rebranded Visual Studio Online in 2015 as Visual Studio Team Services and later as Azure DevOps in 2018.

Since its beginning, this platform has changed significantly. For example, it introduced a customizable, task-based build service, release gates, and much more. Many organizations across the world made a significant investment to run their businesses on Azure DevOps. For this reason, after Microsoft announced the acquisition of GitHub in mid-2018, GitHub announced its automated workflow system, which is much like Azure Pipelines. It’s called GitHub Actions. Due to the switch, some companies became afraid of having to migrate their practices again. In the past few months, I have gotten…