A True Story

There are over 2000 developers in Bill’s organization.  He is a C-level executive for one of the largest insurance companies in North America. Bill boosted developer productivity by 15% last year after taking a closer look at the company’s software supply chain. And this approach isn’t unique to Bill’s organization.  Many high performance IT and DevOps teams are adopting proven supply chain principles to accelerate software delivery.

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14%

Which of the following best describes how you currently monitor and manage systems across your hybrid cloud environment?(Required)

Multiple separate tools for different environments

Multiple separate tools for different monitoring and management functions

Single consolidated dashboard

Custom built monitoring and management solution

No full monitoring and management solution

Don’t know

How valuable would it be for your monitoring and management solution to incorporate predictive analytics to help you identify and address system issues that are critical and not waste time or effort working through all the data and “noise” that is not critical?(Required)

Extremely valuable

Moderately valuable

Somewhat valuable

Slightly valuable

Not valuable

How do you most typically address potential system issues BEFORE they impact your operations?(Required)

Automated workflows and playbooks to remediate potential issues as soon as they are detected

An orchestrated response process that leverages automation, AI, and human expertise to rapidly respond to potential issues

Advanced monitoring tools such as predictive analytics and anomaly detection to proactively identify and address potential issues

Respond to issues as they arise, using manual processes and troubleshooting techniques

A combination of automated remediation, orchestrated response, and/or proactive monitoring to address potential system issues

Don’t know

Other

What methods does your organization use to control and monitor cloud/IT spending?(Required)

Centralized procurement processes

Pre-approved budget thresholds

Automated cost monitoring tools

Department-level spending controls

Regular cost audits and reviews

Cloud cost optimization platform

Approval workflows for resource provisioning

Native financial operations tools provided by the cloud provider

No formal controls in place

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

Which methods do you rely on most to detect security vulnerabilities in your systems?(Required)

Automated scanning tools

Manual assessments

Vendor notifications

Threat modeling (for early detection)

None of these

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

What are the TWO most common ways you prioritize vulnerabilities to address within your environment?(Required)

Based on potential impact

Based on exploitability

Regulatory compliance requirements

Based on CVSS scores

Risk-based analysis of multiple factors

First-in-first-out approach

No formal prioritization process

Don’t know

How do you typically handle system updates and security patches?(Required)

Automated updates and patches

Manually review and apply updates and patches on a regular schedule

A combination of automation and manual review

Apply updates and patches on an as-needed basis.

Outsourced update and patch management

No defined process

Don’t know

Other

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Origins, Quality and Integrity

The concept was rather simple and straightforward.  Bill’s team recognized that they were consuming hundreds of thousands of open source and third-party software components to build their applications.  But at the same time, they did not apply much scrutiny to the origin, quality, age, or integrity of those components.  Developers simply selected components at-will that met their functional requirements and helped them meet the next delivery deadline.

Secrets of the Free-For-All

Deeper analysis of their practice revealed that the free-for-all component sourcing methods were leading to quality, efficiency, and productivity issues.  Here is what Bill found:

• The company had downloaded an average of 27 versions of over 100 different binary artifacts over a one year period.  Bill knew this meant the quality of their applications was being impacted through the use of outdated software components.
• The company had also downloaded 13,203 software components with known security vulnerabilities — and 65% of those included alerts earlier than 2014.  Without quality controls in place, Bill recognized they were sourcing in elective and avoidable risks that would impact the integrity of their application, grow their technical debt, and lead to more rework down the road to replace the flawed components.

Removing Complexity

Bill decided to take action.  He knew that to accelerate innovation, he needed to remove complexity from the company’s software supply chain.  He enacted three moves to eliminate waste and complexity within the open source and third-party components being used:

1. Automate the scrutiny of software suppliers to minimize risk and bloat.
2. Enable real-time traceability and visibility to components used across the development lifecycle, in order to improve response times when defects were discovered – cutting back from days/weeks to minutes!
3. Reducing complexity, rework and risk by standardizing on specific components types (e.g., web frameworks, logging frameworks, encryption modules), using fewer and more current artifact versions, and managing out elective security risks.

Want to hear the rest of the story?

The same principles that Bill applied to his business that boosted developer productivity by 15% are being discussed by Gene Kim (@RealGeneKim), author of The Phoenix Project, and Joshua Corman (@JoshCorman), CTO of Sonatype, on April 30th.  Both Gene and Josh are huge fans of marrying DevOps practices with leading supply chain management principles that enable developers to maximize throughput of features from “code complete” to ‘in production,” without causing chaos.

If you’re looking to achieve similar goals, be sure to join Josh and Gene for this April 30th, 1pm ET, discussion.