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Modern enterprises face a fundamental challenge in DevSecOps: how to accelerate software delivery with cutting-edge platforms like GitLab whilst upholding stringent security and compliance standards at scale. Traditional self-hosting of GitLab provides control but demands significant operational overhead, whilst pure SaaS solutions offer ease of use but often fall short on data residency and regulatory requirements.
CloudChoice by OTTRA represents a revolutionary approach that bridges this gap. It's a fully managed GitLab service delivered in a Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) model, effectively combining the agility of cloud-based DevSecOps with the control of on-premises deployment. This comprehensive analysis examines how CloudChoice addresses the limitations of self-managed GitLab, navigates compliance and security challenges, and unlocks advanced capabilities for modern DevSecOps at scale.
The Hidden Costs of Self-Hosting GitLab
Running GitLab on-premises or in-house cloud infrastructure can strain even the most capable IT organisations. Self-managed GitLab instances incur substantial operational overhead, requiring teams to allocate significant effort to provisioning, upgrades, backups, and troubleshooting of the platform on an ongoing basis.
Every manual upgrade is time-consuming and carries risk. When updates are delayed, critical security patches are missed, leaving the source code and CI/CD platform vulnerable to exploits. Each version lag amplifies technical debt and can introduce compatibility issues or data loss risks during catch-up upgrades.
The Cumulative Impact of Self-Management
Over time, the cumulative impact becomes significant, manifesting in several ways:
• Outdated software missing critical security patches
• Delayed access to new productivity features
• Mounting technical debt from deferred upgrades
• Higher support burdens on legacy setups
• Escalating maintenance costs
• Challenges in passing security audits due to known vulnerabilities
For development teams, this translates to slower access to new productivity features and potential disruptions from emergency patching efforts. For the wider organisation, it means higher support burdens and challenges in maintaining compliance.
In essence, whilst self-hosting delivers control, it also diverts resources away from innovation. Every hour spent on keeping the lights on is an hour not spent building competitive software. This dilemma often leaves IT leaders struggling with the sustainability and risk of managing GitLab solo.
Compliance and Security: The Governance Tightrope
Security and regulatory compliance are paramount concerns that heavily influence how organisations deploy DevSecOps tooling. Many enterprises operate in regulated industries or geographies with strict data residency laws, making a purely cloud-hosted GitLab offering untenable.
For example, GitLab's public SaaS hosts data in the United States, which for some organisations creates legal or policy barriers. In a global survey, over half of DevSecOps professionals flagged the introduction of AI and cloud services into the development lifecycle as a significant risk factor, driven by concerns over data exposure and third-party access.
The Self-Hosted Security Challenge
Such fears compel many to keep their source code, pipelines, and AI-assisted development tools within environments they directly control. However, meeting complex compliance standards on one's own infrastructure is no trivial task, requiring:
• Isolation of sensitive data
• Strict access controls
• Encryption management
• Demonstrable audit trails
• Continuous security monitoring
Even well-resourced teams can falter on security upkeep. Outdated GitLab versions compound vulnerability exposures, and misconfigurations can slip through amidst the juggling of multiple tools and updates. High-profile breaches and failed audits have made leadership acutely aware that "acceptable risk" is a moving target.
Organisations want the benefits of a cloud DevSecOps platform – rapid feature delivery, minimal maintenance – but on their own terms regarding data governance. They seek environments where full data and source-code isolation, residency guarantees, and private networking guard their assets.
CloudChoice by OTTRA: Managed GitLab, Reimagined
CloudChoice by OTTRA is a fully managed GitLab platform delivered within the customer's own cloud environment, uniting the best of on-premises control and cloud service convenience. OTTRA's engineering team takes on the responsibilities of deploying, operating, and supporting GitLab in your AWS, Azure, or GCP account, under your governance.
This approach ensures "your cloud, your control" is more than a slogan. All project data, repositories, and CI/CD pipelines reside in infrastructure that you own, with your preferred security policies, whilst the expertise and automation for managing that infrastructure come from OTTRA.
BYOC Architecture for Compliance
This BYOC architecture is foundational to meeting compliance needs:
• Data never leaves your specified region or virtual network
• Satisfies data residency regulations by design
• Retains ownership of encryption keys and identity management
• Integrates with your SSO/LDAP systems
• Uses your cloud's KMS for encryption at rest
CloudChoice is built on GitLab's Ultimate tier, delivering the complete DevSecOps feature set – from source control and CI/CD to security scanning and portfolio management – as a dedicated instance managed on your behalf. This gives enterprises a single-tenant DevSecOps platform with all the capabilities of GitLab Ultimate in a dedicated deployment model without the maintenance headaches.
Automated Infrastructure Management
Under the hood, OTTRA's service automates what would otherwise be laborious tasks for your platform team. Installation and scaling are handled via Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and Kubernetes, ensuring that deployments are consistent, repeatable, and tuned to GitLab's reference architectures for high availability.
Whether you require a small team deployment or a multi-thousand user, geo-redundant setup, CloudChoice can accommodate it. The operational model is proactive: OTTRA continuously monitors the health of the GitLab instance and its underlying components, taking preventive action or optimising performance based on real-time telemetry.
Secure, Automated Updates – A Cure for Technical Debt
One of the standout benefits of CloudChoice by OTTRA is its secure update pipeline for GitLab. Rather than relying on busy internal teams to manually plan and execute upgrades, CloudChoice delivers automated monthly updates that include the latest stable features and critical patches.
Each upgrade is performed during predefined maintenance windows aligned with the customer's schedule, and every release is vetted in advance to catch potential issues before they hit production. This regimen closes the window of exposure during which unpatched vulnerabilities could be exploited.
Security Compliance Benefits
Studies have shown that organisations with current software versions experience far fewer security incidents. Users of OTTRA's managed service observed 67% fewer security exploit attempts thanks to staying on up-to-date GitLab releases. In practical terms, CloudChoice's approach to updates means security compliance is continuously reinforced.
Many regulatory frameworks, from ISO 27001 to SOC 2, require timely patch management, and CloudChoice makes that a default behaviour rather than an aspirational goal. Automated updates also directly combat the creep of technical debt by ensuring a steady cadence of small, manageable changes.
Continuous Innovation Access
New DevSecOps capabilities become available to your teams as soon as they are stable, rather than months or years later. The business implication is clear: greater agility and innovation, since your developers can incorporate improved tools and practices early on, gaining an edge in productivity.
Meanwhile, risk is lowered because each change is handled by OTTRA's experts who have performed these upgrades across many environments and have battle-tested procedures. Even in the rare event of an issue, the managed service includes immediate rollback plans and hotfix support.
AI Integration with GitLab Duo: Safe Adoption of Self-Hosted AI
In the age of AI-assisted development, GitLab has introduced GitLab Duo – an AI companion integrated across the DevSecOps lifecycle for tasks such as intelligent code completion, automated security analysis, and natural language queries on project data.
For many organisations, the promise of AI-enhanced productivity is tempered by serious concerns over data privacy and sovereignty. Source code and proprietary information are extremely sensitive assets; sending them to a third-party AI service may violate company policy or regulatory rules.
Self-Hosted AI Solution
CloudChoice by OTTRA directly addresses this concern by enabling self-hosted AI integration. CloudChoice fully supports GitLab Duo Self-Hosted, meaning the AI models and processing run within your controlled environment rather than in a distant cloud operated by someone else.
GitLab's latest capabilities allow customers in regulated industries to deploy AI features on-premises or in their private cloud, ensuring that all requests made to LLM backends for GitLab Duo features are handled within their security perimeter. In practical terms, this allows your development teams to tap into AI-powered capabilities without any sensitive code or data ever leaving your network:
• AI-powered code suggestions and completions
• Automated testing recommendations
• Vulnerability explanations and remediation guidance
• Natural language project queries
• Intelligent code review assistance
Breaking the AI Risk Impasse
A recent GitLab survey found that over 50% of professionals view introducing AI into development as risky, largely due to data exposure concerns. GitLab Duo Self-Hosted was created to break this impasse, empowering teams to innovate with AI whilst helping them maintain control over sensitive data and intellectual property.
With CloudChoice by OTTRA, that empowerment is frictionless. OTTRA will integrate and manage the necessary AI infrastructure, such as the AI gateway and compatible large language models, alongside your GitLab instance. Your organisation can choose which AI models to use and CloudChoice will deploy them in a way that aligns with your security and performance requirements.
Early adopters of GitLab Duo Self-Hosted, including government agencies and financial institutions, report that this capability has been crucial to delivering secure AI-powered features in environments that demand air-gapped or strictly controlled operations.
Bring-Your-Own-Cloud Runners: Performance and Isolation on Your Terms
A critical aspect of CI/CD at scale is the infrastructure that executes build jobs, tests, and deployments – known in GitLab as runners. In a typical self-managed scenario, maintaining a fleet of GitLab Runners and scaling them to handle workload spikes is yet another responsibility for the platform team.
Conversely, GitLab's SaaS offers shared runners, but enterprises often avoid them due to multi-tenancy, security concerns, or limited customisation. CloudChoice by OTTRA introduces an elegant solution: bring-your-own-cloud runners fully managed within your environment.
Secure, Scalable CI/CD Infrastructure
When your GitLab instance is deployed via CloudChoice, OTTRA also sets up and manages the CI/CD runner infrastructure in your cloud account, closely integrated with the GitLab application. This means that all pipeline jobs run on hardware and networks that you control, with no co-mingling of workloads with other organisations.
The benefits of this approach are manifold:
• Security and data control: build artifacts and source code stay within your trusted environment
• Performance and flexibility: tailored runner setup with auto-scaling capabilities
• Direct access to internal systems for testing and deployment
• Compliance with data residency and encryption standards
• Cost optimisation through spot instances and volume discounts
CloudChoice's managed runners are implemented following best practices from GitLab's reference architecture, properly registered with authentication tokens and monitored for health and job queue times. The operational burden of runner management is taken on by OTTRA as part of the service.
This capability is especially valuable for large enterprises or those with spiky workloads. CloudChoice can automatically scale out more runners during peak development periods and scale them back down to optimise cost, all within your cloud subscription.
Integrated Observability and Support for DevSecOps
A true enterprise-grade platform isn't complete without robust observability and responsive support. CloudChoice by OTTRA excels in both areas by embedding modern monitoring tools and expert assistance directly into the service.
From day one, your CloudChoice deployment comes with integrated Prometheus and Grafana dashboards that cover all the key metrics of your GitLab instance and its infrastructure. These include real-time data on CPU and memory usage, database performance, queue backlogs, response times of the GitLab application, and even CI pipeline statistics.
Proactive Monitoring and Alerting
With these insights, both your team and OTTRA's operations centre maintain full visibility into the system's health. Grafana dashboards, pre-configured for GitLab's telemetry, allow for at-a-glance views of usage trends and potential bottlenecks, whilst Prometheus alerting rules are set up to detect anomalies or warning signs.
This observability ensures that potential issues are identified and addressed before they escalate into outages, aligning with a proactive maintenance philosophy. If a threshold is breached, OTTRA's engineers are notified immediately and can take action – often before your users notice any degradation.
Expert Support and Escalation
On the support front, CloudChoice offers expert assistance whenever you need it, which is a critical safety net for enterprise IT. Rather than burdening your in-house administrators with diagnosing every GitLab issue, you have OTTRA's support team as a first line of defence.
They are GitLab specialists who can rapidly troubleshoot issues ranging from application errors to underlying infrastructure faults. In scenarios that require deep vendor involvement, OTTRA will seamlessly escalate to GitLab Inc.'s support on your behalf. As a GitLab Select Partner, OTTRA has direct channels to the GitLab engineering and support teams.
Business Impact: Productivity, Cost Efficiency, and Strategic Focus
Adopting CloudChoice by OTTRA is not merely a technical decision; it's a strategic business decision that can yield substantial ROI and organisational benefits. Cost efficiency is one clear advantage, as self-managing an enterprise GitLab installation incurs both direct and significant indirect costs.
Quantifiable Cost Savings
CloudChoice's single transparent subscription consolidates these expenses and, due to economies of scale and automation, reduces them. Organisations that have shifted from self-hosting GitLab to OTTRA's managed model have reported annual cost savings on the order of £85,000 or more, considering the reduction in infrastructure overhead and reclaimed staff time.
Those savings include not only hard costs but also the soft cost of risk reduction. With fewer incidents and faster recovery, the financial impact of downtime or security events is minimised. Furthermore, by recovering thousands of developer and DevOps work hours that would have otherwise been spent on platform maintenance, CloudChoice effectively expands your engineering capacity.
Developer Productivity Gains
One mid-sized tech organisation calculated that in a year they "redeemed" over 4,200 developer-days by moving to OTTRA's managed service, time which was subsequently reinvested into feature development and customer-facing projects. This kind of productivity boost is invaluable at a time when talent is at a premium and speed-to-market is a competitive differentiator.
There's also a strategic realignment of focus that comes with outsourcing platform operations. CIOs and technology leaders can reassign their top engineers from low-level platform administration to higher-order engineering challenges, such as:
• Improving developer onboarding processes
• Refining CI/CD pipelines for faster delivery
• Implementing GitOps and infrastructure-as-code
• Developing new platform capabilities
• Enhancing security and compliance automation
Compliance and Audit Benefits
The managed service's alignment with compliance standards means reduced audit and due diligence workload when courting new business or satisfying regulators. Many organisations find that having an ISO-certified partner managing their platform simplifies the process of proving controls and security measures in place.
Additionally, from a strategic planning perspective, CloudChoice offers predictability. Capacity can be scaled up as the company grows, new features can be rolled out without delay, and costs remain predictable under subscription pricing. This allows for better long-term planning of both budgets and roadmaps.
Developer Experience and Innovation Culture
It's important to recognise the value of developer satisfaction and innovation culture. Engineers gravitate towards organisations where they have modern tools that "just work" and don't impose toil. By providing a fast, reliable, and up-to-date GitLab platform through CloudChoice, companies signal that they invest in their developers' experience.
New features such as improved code review workflows or integrated security scans become available to developers as soon as GitLab releases them, often leading to improved software quality and faster release cycles. Industry analyses have shown that an end-to-end DevSecOps platform can dramatically increase release frequency and efficiency.
Conclusion: Enabling Modern DevSecOps at Scale with CloudChoice
As enterprises embrace the future of software delivery, the limitations of old approaches become clear. Managing core platforms like GitLab in-house may once have been a necessity, but today it can needlessly tax your teams and slow down your strategic momentum.
CloudChoice by OTTRA offers a compelling alternative – a way to consume GitLab as a service, on your own cloud terms, with expert stewardship ensuring it's always secure, compliant, and performant. This analysis has explored how CloudChoice uniquely addresses the pain points of self-hosted DevSecOps and turns them into strengths.
By deploying GitLab in your environment and handling the operational intricacies, CloudChoice delivers what CIOs and Platform Engineering heads have been seeking: the speed and innovation of cloud DevSecOps, fused with the governance and confidence of on-premises solutions.
Strategic Transformation, Not Just Operational Change
Organisations can adopt new technologies like GitLab Duo's AI or advanced CI/CD features at their own pace and on their own turf, all whilst remaining focused on their core mission of delivering value to customers. The platform scales with you and evolves with the industry, as OTTRA ensures you benefit from the latest DevSecOps innovations without the usual lag.
Crucially, CloudChoice does this at scale: it's designed for production workloads, large user bases, and complex regulatory landscapes. It's a pathway to DevSecOps excellence where security is baked in, compliance is continuously met, and development teams are empowered by a platform that accelerates rather than hinders.
For technology leaders evaluating the next 3-5 years, the message is clear. Shifting to a BYOC managed model like CloudChoice is not simply an operational change; it's a transformation in how your organisation delivers software. It means your top talent focus on differentiation, not maintenance. It means your security and compliance become proactive rather than reactive. And it means your development capability remains at the cutting edge, fueled by AI and real-time insights, unencumbered by infrastructure drudgery.
The Strategic Imperative: In a business environment where every advantage matters, CloudChoice by OTTRA provides a robust, proven way to elevate your software delivery to the next level. The case for consuming GitLab via this managed service model – for the sake of agility, security, and scale – is a compelling one that forward-looking organisations are increasingly unable to ignore.
