Forecasting Culture: Sunny with Accumulating Collaboration
Bryson Koehler believes the most important enabling factor for DevOps success is culture. Koehler is CTO of IBM’s newly formed Watson and Cloud Platform group. Prior to this role, he served as executive vice president, distinguished engineer and CIO/CTO of The Weather Company (TWC), an IBM business since 2016. He has a record of successfully […]
DevOps Leaders Share 2017 Reflections, Predictions
As the New Year kicks off, it is a time for reflection and a chance to look ahead and plan for what is to come. While many are making personal resolutions pertaining to their physique, job performance or travel plans, there is a lot of chatter in the software delivery space around what DevOps will […]
The Big Digital Transformation Trends Through 2017
For a number of years now, the enterprise has been well underway in their digital transformation efforts, as they use data analytics, mobile, cloud services, IoT and other technologies to transform their organizations. But while some companies have embraced digital transformation, others have lagged. They’ll be playing catch-up in 2017, while their counterparts will be […]
Citizen Developer Movement Gains Steam
It’s been about a year since we covered how the rise of the consumerization of IT had extended beyond cloud services and devices to application development and the advent of the Citizen Developer from rarity to mainstream. The momentum of citizen developers in the enterprise has only increased in the past year. And the move […]
Foster Creative Workers, not Assembly Lines
Why do we keep building assembly lines of creative people? Why do tech companies still structure their developer workforces around ideas invented during the industrial revolution over a century ago? It’s ignorant, lazy and, worst of all, it pisses everyone off. Most of these archaic ideas must die if we are to take fully enlightened advantage of the […]
4 Essential Practices to Succeed at ChatOps
We know enterprises are embracing messaging apps and incorporating so-called “ChatOps” into their workflow. ChatOps is, potentially, a powerful way to facilitate more swift decision-making and problem-solving and to receive quick, expert guidance. “With the rise of cloud services that can be easily deployed, and increased awareness and importance given to productivity and collaboration within […]
How to Bridge the Developer Gap
It’s time to bring cloud application development back into the organization and bridge the developer gap by training your own people. For years, companies have outsourced many IT functions, treating computing as a commodity, perhaps thanks in large part to Nick Carr’s publication, “IT Doesn’t Matter.” Carr predicted that computing would become a utility. And […]
‘Best’ is Relative, but Starts at the Top
Your aging mom needs a new car. You are picking it out for her because she quit paying attention to cars long ago. All you ever buy is Fords. You also always buy trucks. Do you pop off and buy your Mom an F350? Not unless she actually needs an F350 (highly unlikely, but aging […]
Sanjay Mirchandani Builds Out Puppet While Keeping Culture Intact
I attended my first PupetConf last week in San Diego. While there I had a chance to sit down one on one with Sanjay Mirchandani who recently took over as CEO/President of Puppet from long time CEO and founder, Luke Kanies, who is now a member of the BOD. As this was my first meeting […]
Mainstreaming the Mainframe: DevOps, Automation, Unified Deployment
The mainframe is alive and well. That big metal beast in the data center is not going anywhere anytime soon—nor are its applications. “If mainframe applications disappeared tomorrow, planes couldn’t fly, people wouldn’t get paid, and the economy would come to a halt,” wrote Forrester analysts in a recent report, “Digital Transformation Needs Mainframe DevOps.” […]
5 Leadership Keys to Enterprise Agility
Much like living creatures, organizations that can best adapt to their surroundings are the organizations that are most likely to thrive. For enterprises, that means being able to adapt swiftly to business and market conditions—and at the very least adapt more swiftly than their competitors. For years, building an agile enterprise has been the focus […]
Are Companies’ Digital Transformations Near Complete? The C-Suite Thinks So
Enterprises have been busy in their digital transformation efforts for a number of years. They’ve been using data and software in efforts to renew and attempt to rejuvenate entire lines of their business, from streamlining deeply entrenched processes to creating entirely new business models. Interestingly, while many developers and IT leaders believe their efforts are […]
Putting Ops Back in DevOps
What Agile means to your typical operations staff member is, “More junk coming faster that I will get blamed for when it breaks.” There always is tension between development and operations when something goes south. Developers are sure the code worked on their machine; therefore, if it does not work in some other environment, operations […]
DevOps: Commoditizing Infrastructure
Hardware vendors face a quandary. How do you distinguish yourself as superior from your competitors if you are unable to continue to grow a distinct architecture as your competitive advantage? But this dilemma does not begin and end with only hardware vendors; operating system vendors and virtual machine vendors are on the same horizon. In […]
Integrating ARA into traditional RM
Application Release Automation (ARA) is terminology that includes several DevOps constructs from a singular, application-centric point of view. In essence, ARA implies the automation of a single app from build through deployment (even if that deployment is to production). Of course, embedded or implied in that automation terminology is build automation or construction; deployment automation, […]
Machine Learning Put to Work in the Digital Economy
IBM’s Watson already has a new retail job lined up to get a head start saving for its holiday spending this season. (Hey, even artificial intelligences appreciate buying gifts.) And Macy’s is hoping its customers appreciate its “Macy’s On Call” pilot, which combines Satisfi’s communications platform and IBM Watson cognitive technology for machine learning. Macy’s […]
On Building Self-Driving IT
More CIOs than ever are moving their data centers to the cloud. Some have decided to maintain their on-premises data centers and move cloud-first with all new deployments, while others are moving more aggressively to all-cloud and are retiring on-premises hardware and software as quickly as possible. Both types of enterprises also are working to […]
Top 10 Emerging Technologies Enterprises Should Know
The momentum behind the adoption of new technologies underway is no less than astounding. Those enterprises that not only adopt, but learn to master, emerging technologies will be the clear winners in the years ahead as they learn their customers’ needs better, rapidly develop new and successful products and services, optimize their use of business […]
User Identity in Focus as Cloud, Device Use Grows
Recently, I had the pleasure of attending SailPoint’s Navigate ’16 identity management conference. I’ve always been interested in the identity management aspect of security. Many of the first wave of identity management vendors launched around 1999, when I started covering information security as a full-time focus. These vendors dealt with all of the identity challenges […]
Q&A: CircleCI’s Kevin Bell on Continuous Delivery
There’s been a lot of talk and momentum lately when it comes to continuous delivery. And it seems every enterprise has moved part, or all, of its development efforts to continuous delivery—or is at least talking about doing so. But there are many challenges such as security, dealing with legacy systems and internal politics associated […]
The Persistence of Enterprise Tech Failure Rates
During a recent dinner conversion with a CIO friend, I was surprised to learn that his organization was having challenges delivering the applications and IT services on a timely enough manner that the business needs. The business is taking too long to approve the budget for major tech projects to start, then develop and deploy, […]
Tales of DevOps Discovery Part 2: Definitions Matter
Definitions Matter: Step Two in a DevOps Transformation The first post in this series on DevOps Discovery discussed the importance of asking fundamental questions of stakeholders to facilitate alignment on priorities and establish a mission statement when beginning a DevOps transformation. Part 2, below, reviews definitions of common DevOps-related terms and provides examples of how […]
Putting the ‘Biz’ in DevOps
I was having a conversation with a client recently and we both came to the conclusion that DevOps, as used in some conversations, is misnamed. DevOps, by virtue of its name, implies that the focus of improvement is aimed at development and operations. While this is true, I believe that DevOps, at a higher level, […]