Debating the Future of DevOps

Change happens at an astronomical pace in the DevOps world, and I constantly see organizations shifting in their needs as the weeks and months go by. One week, the most essential need will be a specific configuration management tool and the next, it will be an urgent requirement to work on containerization.

Many companies forget that simplicity often is the key and the focus should be on transferring to engineers the requirements of the business and product owners. It’s not always about implementing every new tool just because another awesome engineering team is using it—they might have different business needs and end goals than yours.

Whether you are consulting for another client or working on your own internal applications, is your focus on how exciting the new container management system is or how to build the best possible end product that the business requires? Your DevOps organization should be focused on understanding these needs as well as the needs of every team across the technology function and more. So how, then, do we find the line between leading, following or resisting trends to create the most competitive advantage for our organizations?

The DevOps movement will continue to break down silos and increase collaboration. I see DevOps and big data coming closer together; for example, our DataOps teams will have the usual deep understanding of infrastructure, the ability to automate processes, write scripts, build CI pipelines and continuously deploy new code. However, there also will be increasing demand to work with the likes of Splunk and Hadoop to process large sets of data as well as monitoring and logging.

The cultural idea of bringing our teams closer together, to understand each other and to increase productivity will drive such shifts in skill sets. Other technology touchpoints such as containerization and serverless architecture will continue to spread deeper into organizations, while security and privacy may creep further up our list of priorities as we continue adopting more technologies into our organizations. However, it may take some tough learning curves before we really understand the implications caused by not taking SecOps seriously.

Every organization has different needs based on the stakeholders, the tech stack, the infrastructure architecture and more. DevOps will continue to shift, take on other aliases and functions, but the truth is that the future of DevOps is simply the future of your organization.

Understanding what that future holds, however, is up for debate. That’s why we’re hosting an event designed to push DevOps thinking beyond current boundaries among practitioners of varying backgrounds. The Future of DevOps Debate, an invitation-only event, is happening Nov. 10. Salt, host of the event, plans to share footage of the event as well as posting further blogs and articles, providing everyone a glimpse into the day’s conversations and, well, debates.

The day includes a dedicated session discusses the pain points, experiences and successes leaders have had in their past and current positions. The day’s conversations will be in debate-style format so that everyone gets their opportunity to share thoughts and contribute. The core focus is to work toward the future of DevOps.

This is the first Future of DevOps Debate, and Salt plans to run a series of events on a quarterly basis. It also contributes to the local New York DevOps community, sponsoring events such as DockerNYC and hosting ServerlessNYC, to name a few.

It’s clear we are at an inflection point in DevOps, as new technologies and processes strive for attention. Together, we can help shape the future of DevOps and push the industry well beyond its current boundaries.

About the Author / Conor Delanbanque

Conor Delanbanque is managing consultant and head of DevOps USA at Salt. Previously, he was supporting and consulting clients across Europe with their DevOps transformation efforts. Connect with him on Twitter at @ConorDevOps.